The Poems and Songs of Henry Hall of Hereford
A Jacobite Poet of the 1690s

Oliver Pickering

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Legenda (General Series)

Legenda

13 September 2022  •  242pp

ISBN: 978-1-839541-39-1 (hardback)  •  RRP £85, $115, €99

ISBN: 978-1-839541-40-7 (paperback, 23 June 2025  )  •  RRP £15, $19.50, €17

ISBN: 978-1-839541-41-4 (JSTOR ebook)

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In addition to its original library hardback edition, this title is now on sale in the new student-priced Legenda paperback range.

Henry Hall (c. 1656-1707), Organist of Hereford Cathedral and composer of church music, was also a compulsive writer of lively and irreverent verse, a notably convivial local personality, and a fiercely Jacobite opponent of William III and Mary II. Political satires feature prominently among the 150 mainly unpublished poems and songs attributable to him. These also include outspoken epistles to like-minded male friends, local satires, drinking songs, love poems, riddles, and tributes to national figures, among them John Dryden and his friend Henry Purcell. In this first study of Hall’s poetic output Oliver Pickering places him in context and surveys in detail the manuscript and printed circulation of his work. Twenty-five poems have been chosen for editing, all but one previously unpublished.

Oliver Pickering, formerly Deputy Head of Special Collections in Leeds University Library, is Honorary Fellow in the School of English at Leeds and a Fellow of the English Association.

Reviews:

  • ‘Pickering has documented and illuminated with great learning and skill a minor but nevertheless fascinating figure in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century English literary culture – for which all serious students of the period will be very grateful.’ — David Hopkins, Seventeenth Century 38.4, 2023, 720-22 (full text online)
  • ‘Pickering’s book is meticulously prepared and handsomely presented... this fine study offers rich rewards to those interested in Hall’s life and career as a whole and will be invaluable to scholars of Restoration music as the starting point for smaller-scale investigations of his music.’ — Alan Howard, Early Music published online, 2025 (full text online)

For a contents listing, see this volume at JSTOR.

Bibliography entry:

Pickering, Oliver, The Poems and Songs of Henry Hall of Hereford: A Jacobite Poet of the 1690s (Legenda, 2022)

First footnote reference: 35 Oliver Pickering, The Poems and Songs of Henry Hall of Hereford: A Jacobite Poet of the 1690s (Legenda, 2022), p. 21.

Subsequent footnote reference: 37 Pickering, p. 47.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

Bibliography entry:

Pickering, Oliver. 2022. The Poems and Songs of Henry Hall of Hereford: A Jacobite Poet of the 1690s (Legenda)

Example citation: ‘A quotation occurring on page 21 of this work’ (Pickering 2022: 21).

Example footnote reference: 35 Pickering 2022: 21.

(To see how these citations were worked out, follow this link.)

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