From the Archives: John David Sainsbury

John David Sainsbury (Bermondsey, 1793? – 1869)

The publisher of a collection of musicians’ biographies, bringing together the work of several others in 1824.

A dictionary of musicians from the earliest ages to the present time: comprising the most important biographical contents of the works of Gerber, Choron, and Fayolle, Count Orloff, Dr Burney, Sir John Hawkins, &c.  (London: Sainsbury and Co., 1824).  One of the 175 copies of the first issue.

When the Dictionary was in preparation the booksellers Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, Brown & Green, then in its third generation, purchased 250 copies from the publisher Sainsbury and Co. for the sum of £175.  Reviews appeared in the Morning Chronicle and The Times on 8 October.

Inscribed on front free end-paper "Presented to The Royal Society of Musicians by Josh Calkin [Joseph Calkin (1781-1846, Member A255) March 1840".  The Governors’ minutes of the Monthly Meeting of 5 April 1840, when Calkin was on the Court of Assistants, record: “Mr Calkin presented the Society with a copy of the “Biographical Dictionary of Musicians” handsomely bound”. 

The son of a merchant, Sainsbury originally started life as a coal merchant in Smithfield.  From 1823 he promoted himself as a literary agent in the area near to where the Dorset Garden Theatre had been and near to where many publishers and printers were in business.  The agency produced just three titles of which the two volume Dictionary was the first publication of international musicians and composers printed in English; it has been a well-used source for information later used in the Dictionary of National Biography and in Grove’s Dictionary of Music and Musicians.

Despite much of the content originating from other publications, histories and periodicals, the Dictionary does include content from the musicians with whom Sainsbury corresponded – their replies can be found in the Euing Collection at Glasgow University.