This collection brings together primary source material for music making in private homes in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.  It can be compared with and used alongside the University of Southampton's Austen Family Music Books collection, which features similar domestic musical materials from the same period.

Domestic Sheet Music and Manuscripts includes several different source types.  The majority of the collection consists of binder's volumes of printed sheet music, in which separate sheet music items purchased by an individual user have been assembled into a personal collection. Such volumes reveal both general trends and individual choices, much in the way of playlists of recorded music today. Many users inscribed their sheet music with signatures, dates of acquisition, and other personal data, and they also regularly annotated their scores with performance information, including ornamentation, articulation, fingerings, and other musical directions. Annotated volumes provide valuable information about performance practice to supplement the advice found in contemporary pedagogical literature and treatises on performance.

Original owners for many of the volumes in this collection have been identified.  The collection includes:

·         binder's volumes and sheet music (collected and bound c.1825-1840) of Sir Thomas Gladstone of Fasque (1804-1889), brother of prime minister William Gladstone, and his wife Louisa Gladstone, née Fellowes

·         6 volumes bound for Jane and Mary Ann Shirreff of Deptford, Kent, and Stradmore House, Cardiganshire (c.1795-1830)

·         5 volumes bound for Hester Boyd (c.1830)

·         1 volume bound for M.A. Whitford (c.1790-1800)

·         1 volume bound for Marion Sprot (1822)

·         1 volume bound for the dancing master Robert Gray (c1810-1820) 

See the individual volumes in the collection for further information.  Contents are listed in the individual volume information pages, which include links to full bibliographic records in the University of Southampton's online library catalogue.