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Research dossier · Arts & Letters

Cecil Sharp

English folklorist and song collector (1859–1924)

Manuscripts, fine bindings, an engraving plate and preserved performance ephemera
Arts and lettersInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 15, 2026
Entity authoritySource title only
Source-derived summary

Cecil James Sharp was an English collector of folk songs, folk dances and instrumental music, as well as a lecturer, teacher, composer and musician. He was a key figure in the folk-song revival in England during the Edwardian period. According to Roud's Folk Song in England, Sharp was the country's "single most important figure in the study of folk song and music".

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Cecil Sharp” is english folklorist and song collector (1859–1924). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Cecil, Sharp and English, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewBest approached as a cultural-object dossier: authorship and date matter, but circulation and reception often explain the wider significance. The current 62-word lead offers orientation but no explicit four-digit date, so chronology should not be assumed. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Cecil, Sharp and English is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “english folklorist and song collector (1859–1924)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Reception evidence should be dated and situated: later canonical status may differ sharply from the work’s initial circulation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026.

Critical limits

Titles can refer to several editions, objects or performances, making precise identification essential before interpretation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Separate the work, its editions or performances, and its later reception. Catalogue records, publication histories and object files often preserve different parts of that story.

Best used for
  • Identifying works and editions
  • Tracing reception history
  • Finding collection records
Verify next

The original object or edition, catalogue raisonné, performance record, rights file and holding institution.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Cecil Sharp”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Cecil Sharp primary sources, Cecil Sharp archive and Cecil research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Cecil Sharp”?
  2. Which edition, object, performance or recording is being described?
  3. Where is authorship, date or provenance documented?
Subject index

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Cecil Sharp” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.