John Pitts : Ballad Printer of Seven Dials, London 1765-1844; with a Short Account of His Predecessors in the Ballad & Chapbook Trade

Private Libraries Association, London, first edition, 1969. Edition of 1000 copies of which 700 were for sale. Cloth, 8vo, 26 cm,. 160 pp, ills, facs, map. From the preface: "I started collecting broadside ballads many years ago when I saw a batch of them in an antiquarian bookshop and found that they were good traditional country songs like 'Fare well He', 'Bedlam City', 'Banks of Invarary', and 'Young Riley'. They were narrow slips, printed on old rough tinted paper, with quaint woodcuts, and the publisher was John Pitts, of Seven Dials, London. From that time onwards I read widely on the subject and collected broadsides and chapbooks wherever I could find them and I soon discovered that the topical ballads were also full of interest. The Charles Hindley books about James Catnach fired me with enthusiasm, but Catnach had all the attention and I could not help regretting that nobody had written about John Pitts, who seemed a much more interesting printer, although less flamboyant than Catnach. Over the years I searched for any scraps of information about Pitts, and it became something of a passion to find sufficient material for a short study which would do for Pitts what Hindley had done for Catnach… There are still many details missing, and probably some things we shall never know, but I have set down all I could discover on the life and times of the elusive John Pitts. Name and date on front free endpaper, otherwise Very Good.