The Music of the Poets - A Musicians` Birthday book with calendar pages, compiled by Eleonore D`Esterre-Keeling, signed by many important artists, including:
(this list includes all the real ink signatures (not printed in the calendar) that we could identify:
Singers: Enrico Caruso, John McCormack, David Bispham, Blanche Marchesi, Emma Albani, Alice Esty, Alice Lakin, Belle Cole, Marie Duma, Lenora Sparkes, Harry Plunket Greene, Arthur Winckworth, Adeline Tomsett, Agnes Nichols, Goergina Burns, Luisa Sobrino, Arthur Foxton Ferguson, Henry L. Balfour, Edith Clegg, Fanny Moody Manners, Evangeline Florence, Zelie de Lussan, Maud Santley, Rutland Barrington, Antoinette Sterling MacKinley, Clara Butt, Philip Brozel, Robert Watkin Mills and more.
Actors and actresses: Sarah Bernhard, William Rea, Ellaline Terriss Hicks, Julia Neilson, Viola Tree, Robert Kennerley Rumford, Ethel Irving, William Mollison, Lillie Langtry, Frank R. Benson, Russ Whytal, Fred Terry, William Kendal, Herbert Beerbohm Tree, Mollie Lowell, William Jefferson, Ellen Terry, Johnston Forbes-Robertson, Constance Collier. Constant Coquelin, Beatrice Stella Campbell, Wilson Barrett, Lionel Brough and more.
Conductors: Hans Richter, music prodigy child Max Darewski, etc.
Violinists: Mischa Elman, Joseph Joachim, Wilma Neruda Halle, Johann Kruse, Florizel von Reuter, Jan Kubelik, Willy Hess, Emanuel Wirth, Haydn Inwards, etc.
Composers: Samuel Coleridge Taylor (autograph music quote signed), Hamish MacCunn, Edwin Lemare, Charles Villiers Stanford (autograph music quote signed), Frederic H. Cowen and more.
Pianists: Wilhelm Backhaus, Sandra Droucker, Mark Hambourg, H. Yeaman Dodds, Fanny Davies, Vladimir de Pachmann, Victor Marmont, etc.
Cellists: Herbert Walenn, Robert Hausmann, Arnold Foldesy, Friedrich Grützmacher, etc.
Also: Musicologist Mabel Dolmetsch, harpist Thomas Thomas (Aptommas), early music musician Arnold Dolmetsch, music theorist Ebenezer Prout, politician Ella Russell, etc.
A large number of signatures we could not identify or find information about, with names not listed above.
Each double page has a left page with calendar dates, poetry, and sometimes printed signatures, and a right page that many times is signed by one or more artists.
Verso of frontend page identifies this book, with the inscription William D. Spark, his address, February 2nd, 1899.
Hard, leather-bound covers, 355 numbered pages, 6.5 x 9 inches, a few lose pages and some wear on spine, but in overall very good condition.
See scans of all pages with real, ink signatures, which are always on the RIGHT pages.
A fantastic artistic window into the English late Victorian/Edwardian era.