William Allingham's "Ballad Book" and Its Victorian Readers.

Allingham, William, 1824-1889; Authors; Audiences; Ballad (Literary form); Primitivism; Literature

A literary criticism is presented which focuses on the writer William Allingham. When Allingham began to compile his book of British ballads for the Golden Treasury Series in 1863, he faced a singular situation. More people were becoming interested in ballads than ever before, stimulated by the growing English pride in the chivalric past, the vogue for primitivism, and the interest, both well-meaning and sentimental, in the customs and traditions of the "common folk." It would, of course, be a mistake to say that even the more scholarly ballad works constituting that national treasure at mid-century had ever been faithfully presented. In fact, there were few writers of the aesthetic movement at mid-century better suited than Allingham to the task of compiling a non-scholarly collection of British ballads for a general readership.