Ellen T. Harris - George Frideric Handel: A Life with Friends

This book has been in progress for many years and has incurred many debts. I was honored to hold the MIT Class of 1949 Professorial Chair from 1996 to the time of my official retirement from MIT in 2011. The fund associated with this chair was the primary support for my archival research over that entire period. I am also indebted to the National Endowment for the Humanities for a Fellowship in 20062007 and to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton for a Fellowship in 2004, both of which gave me the time to work with the material I had gathered and to begin shaping it into a narrative.

I am extremely grateful to all the libraries, archives, and museums named in the bibliography where I spent many happy and exciting hours. The staffs of these repositories were unfailingly helpful, responding to my questions and supplying me with the many, many documents I requested.

I am especially grateful to Kim Sloan (curator, Prints and Drawing Room, British Museum), John Greenacombe (former general editor of the Survey of London), and the late Christopher Elrington (former general editor of the Victoria County History) for essential research advice at critical moments.

I am indebted to the research assistants who have worked with me at MIT over the years: Elizabeth Connors, Gerald Waldman, and Dr. Minji Kim. I am also grateful to Dr. Debbie Welham, and to Professor Chris Mounsey, who recommended her, for providing some crucial research on art auction catalogues.

I owe a special debt of gratitude to the many friends and colleagues who read parts or all of the book at various stages. Their criticisms improved my thinking and clarified my writing, while their enthusiasms gave me the encouragement I needed to keep on. Many thanks to Jane Bernstein, Samuel Jay Keyser, Eddie Kohler, Stephanie Leone, Dr. Abraham Lotan, Robert Marshall, Nancy Netzer, Michael Ouellette, Charles Shadle, John H. Roberts, Kay Shelemay, Kim Sloan, Ruth Smith, and Rev. James Weiss. I hope each of you recognizes your importance to this project.

I am particularly indebted to Maribeth Payne, music editor at W. W. Norton, for her continued enthusiasm and persistence during the long gestation of this project. The finished shape of the book owes a great deal to our conversations over the years and to her keen insight into book publishing. Michael Fauver, music assistant editor, only came into this project in the six months before the manuscript was submitted, but in that short space of time has made invaluable contributions, and not only of an editorial nature. It was his clarity that guided me through the many hurdles of manuscript submission, editorial process, and design.

Above all, I am grateful to the direct and lateral descendants of Handels friends who encouraged my work, gave me access to unique documents and portraits, and offered me gracious hospitality in their homes: S. Anthony Bosanquet, Jean Elrington, Ruth Hayden, Lynette Keating, James Lord Malmesbury, and Jacqui Mills.

1. Currencies

2. Selected Cost-of-Living Figures for England (Primarily London) in the Mid-Eighteenth Century

Figures are drawn from the following sources:

James E. Thorold Rogers, A History of Agriculture and Prices in England, vol. 7: 17031793 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), given with page references (this is the foundational study)

Marjorie Penn, ed., The Account Books of Gertrude Savile, 173658, Thoroton Society Record Series 24 (1967): 99152; musical references given in bold with date of account entry; others identified Savile