03/09/2026
An extremely rare book of dance music and instructions, discovered in a Lutterworth attic, will go under the hammer in Market Harborough on September 8th, with a guide price of £3,000-£5,000.
John Playford’s The Dancing Master contains material from various editions and supplements dating from the late 1690s to 1702. The book bears the handwritten inscription ‘John Stevens, Lutterworth, 1698’, suggesting it was in local ownership over 300 years ago.
The volume was recently discovered by its Lutterworth-based vendors during a clear-out.
The sellers said: “We were sorting out some space in the attic and came across a number of books that had come to us from a lady in Lutterworth in the early 1990s. She had been a music teacher, with a broader love of music, owning a lot of musical instruments and sheet music going back to before 1900.
“Amongst the boxes, we came across the John Playford Dancing Master book, dated 1698 in ink, which was hidden in a small cardboard box wrapped in a 1937 King George VI coronation handkerchief.”
The discovery offers a rare opportunity for collectors to acquire an early surviving example of Playford’s highly influential dance manuals.
“This battered old book may not look like much at first glance, but such is the rarity of this fascinating local piece of social history that we expect it to attract global interest on the day, particularly from specialist collectors in the USA,” comments Gildings director Will Gilding.
“In the days when printed materials were still relatively limited and costly, these popular manuals encapsulated the very latest dance fashions. Aside from their age, the reason so few of them survive is that they were compact working guides, constantly carried, updated and used by dancing instructors.”
Born in 1623, John Playford was a London-based music publisher and bookseller. The original edition titled, The English Dancing Master was published in 1651 and was repeatedly revised as new dances became fashionable, making the series an invaluable source of insight into the music, dance and culture of 17th-century England. Following Playford’s death in 1686, the manuals continued to be published in 18 editions until 1728.
The dances featured in the manuals offered a popular alternative to the more formal French court dances favoured by the aristocracy of the time. Designed as social dances, these ‘country dances’ saw participants line up and move progressively in patterns and formations to lively tunes, often played on the violin or flute. By the late 17th century, many were described as “Longways for as many as will”, allowing any number of couples to join the dance.
The attic find comprises an unknown edition of The Dancing Master, thought possibly to be the 9th edition, bound together with the second edition of The Second Part of the Dancing Master, dated 1698. The initial title pages and other pages are missing, and the volume has also been heavily restored.
It also contains An Additional Sheet to the Second Part of The Dancing Master and Twenty Four New Country Dances, thought to have been printed in 1702.
“This remarkable volume, which evokes a long-lost period of history, is among the most exciting finds we’ve seen come into the saleroom recently,” adds Will Gilding. “And it really does go to show that you never know what could be hiding in your loft!”
The flagship Fine Art & Antiques Auction will take place on Tuesday, 8 September at 10.30am, featuring some of the finest and most impressive items to have come into the saleroom in recent months. The auction catalogue can be viewed here:
