The classic, comprehensive reference to the subject features a biographical dictionary of craftsmen, along with many of their signatures and marks. The new foreword by music scholar Benjamin Hebbert explains the important role British violin makers played in the development of the instrument.
Rev. W. Meredith Morris (1867-1921) was well known for his studies of the music, dialect, and folklore of his native Wales. Music scholar Benjamin Hebbert (St. Cross College, University of Oxford) trained as an instrument maker in London before studying as a musicologist at Leeds University, at the University of Oxford, and as a Coleman Fellow in Art History at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. His particular areas of expertise are early British and Italian stringed instruments, and he is an increasingly respected authority in both Europe and the United States. His doctoral studies are directed towards an analysis of instrument making in seventeenth-century London. He has worked within the violin industry and lectures on historical aspects of instrument making to violin makers at London Metropolitan University, where he is also an honorary research fellow.