[SHEET MUSIC; GLEBE, SYDNEY] Such is life

A$120 · Offered by Douglas Stewart Fine Books

Limited edition

Words by Walter Allen. Music by Harry Mackenzie . Cover: Written by Walter Allen Esqr., composed by Harry Mackenzie . Sydney : J. Reading Co., Music-sellers Publishers, 356 George Street, [ ]. Folio (335 x 250 mm), upper wrapper lettered in decorative fonts (faint early music seller s stamp to upper margin); [6] pp. of music notation; wrappers toned, some very light foxing; a good example. A later (though still scarce) edition of Walter Allen and Harry Mackenzie s ballad, which has a strong connection with the Allen family of Toxteth Park, Glebe. The music was originally published by Henry Marsh in Sydney in 1855; a second Sydney edition by J. R. Clarke appeared in 1857. We could not trace another example of this particular front cover variant of J. Reading s 1874 edition in Australian collections. Walter Bourne Allen (1839-1867) was a son of New South Wales politician George Allen (1800-1877), of Toxteth Park, Glebe. The front cover of the first edition of Such is life carried the statement: The music composed and respectfully dedicated to the Misses Allen, (Toxteth Park) by Harry Mackenzie . This is evidently a reference to Walter s surviving younger sisters Richarda (b. 1841), Catherine (b. 1845), and Marian (b.1849). Walter was married to June Ferguson on 9 June 1866 in the chapel on the Toxteth Park estate. Scarcely ten months later, on 9 April 1867, Walter s death notice appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald : The Cottage, Toxteth Park, WALTER ALLEN, Esq., fourth son of

• Binding: Hardcover

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