FREEMASONRY IN MUSIC AND LITERATURE: The Canonbury Papers, Volume 2. Edited by Trevor Stewart, Canonbury Masonic Research Centre, London, 2005. Hardback, 169 pages, £17.50. ISBN 0-9543498-1-4. Available from CMRC, Canonbury Tower, Canonbury Place, London N1 2NQ.

This book, the second volume in the series ‘Canonbury Papers’, contains nine papers delivered at the 2003 Fifth Canonbury International Conference ‘Freemasonry in Music and Literature’, and is edited by Trevor Stewart, Prestonian Lecturer for 2004. Equally divided between the topics of music and literature, it is well laid out, with clear illustrations. The footnotes and references appear at the end of each paper with double spacing between notes, which does make them easy to locate, even though – and I have to confess a personal preference for footnotes – one is obliged constantly to be turning sheaves of pages to take in the full facts of the article.
    This is a most valuable addition to the corpus of masonic publications dealing with what has certainly been a major influence on Freemasonry, especially during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The papers cover the topics: masonic songs in the eighteenth century; the Victorian composer and conductor, Sir Michael Costa; a reconsideration of the Regius and Cooke manuscripts; Russian Freemasonry seen through its literature from the late eighteenth century to the present day; an examination of masonic songs, marches, odes, cantatas, oratorios and operas from 1730 – 1812; the evidence for Jacobitism in the work of Hogarth and Edgar Allan Poe; a reconsideration of the masonic membership of James Boswell; and a paper on the overlooked literary sub-genre of eighteenth century masonic songbooks.
    A well-balanced and most readable collection from a range of masonic and non-masonic scholars (Andrew Pink, Edward Batley, Diane Clements, Andrew Prescott, Lauren Leighton, Malcolm Davies, Marie Mulvey-Roberts, David Stevenson, and Andreas Önnerfors), from England, Scotland, Sweden and the United States, I heartily recommended this book not only to the Freemason who is keen to make a daily advancement in his knowledge, but also to the student of the arts who will discover some fascinating ways in which these have influenced the Craft. It is no doubt somewhat unusual for a contributor to a volume to be asked to write a review of the same, so I shall obviously make no comment about the tenth and final short paper on Mozart’s contribution to the Craft.
    John Wade