Jessie Fothergill (1851–1891) was born in Manchester to a Yorkshire Quaker family. She spent most of her life in the Manchester area, except for a year and a half in Germany. Both places come out in The First Violin: the main char­acter grew up in Yorkshire, while most of the story takes place in Germany.

The First Violin, first published in 1878, was the author’s third novel, but the first major success. In fact, some contemporary reviewers seem to have thought it was her first book. It must have been fairly popular, since it was still in print thirty years later.

The “first violin” of the title is what is now called a concertmaster. The English term is a calque of German Konzertmeister; it first appeared in American English in the late 19th century, and in British English a decade or so later. In fact, the word Concertmeister (spelled like that) is used a few times in the book.

The book also anticipates a modern rom-com trope by making the heroine “awkward” and “clumsy” to counterbalance her obligatory good qualities: beauty, singing voice, taste in clothes and so on.

Technicalia

The First Violin was originally serialized in Temple Bar, vols. 52-54, conveniently covering the exact calendar year 1878. It was always the lead story in its issue (pages 1, 145, 289 and 433 respectively). The first book publication was in three volumes, corresponding almost exactly to the chapter division in the three periodical volumes.

All footnotes are carried over verbatim from Temple Bar. But originally there were far more of them. The periodical seems to have had limited confidence in its readers’ linguistic proficiency; almost every German word or phrase is footnoted, at least on its first appearance. French and Latin, on the other hand, are left to the reader’s own resources. I’ve listed all glosses in each chapter’s Notes and Corrections section, with supplemental notes in (parentheses).

More helpfully, Temple Bar consistently identifies the narrator after the view­point starts alternating, early in Book III. Beginning with Volume 53 (Chapter III of Book III), each chapter is headed either “May’s Story” or “Friedhelm’s Story”.

German spelling is a bit capricious, and can’t always be blamed on archaism: Brod, nix, wol. Most of it goes back to Temple Bar, but the consistent Allée with acute accent was introduced in the first book publication. When one character addresses another as “thou”, it tends to mean they are speaking German.

Illustrations

The 1878 original—serial and book—had no illustrations; for those we can thank Brentano, the New York publisher. Even without any other information, it soon becomes obvious that the illustrations were done in 1896, although the dramatic date is around 1870.

The title page announces “Illustrations by G. W. Brenneman”. This may or may not be George W. Brenneman (1856–1906). He was sufficiently obscure that sources aren’t even fully sure of his name: the 1965 edition of Mantle Fielding’s Dictionary lists a George W. Brennerman with the same dates, noting that he specialized in “Landscapes and animals, especially horses in action”. If he signed any of the illustrations to The First Violin, I couldn’t find it.

Formalities

This ebook is based on the 1910 Brentano’s (New York) edition, which in turn is a reprint of the same publisher’s 1896 edition. The title page says “Two Volumes in One”, which turns out to mean that the pagination starts over again at 1 midway through the book. I’ve split it back into two to reduce confusion.

Along with Temple Bar, a few questionable readings were checked against the three-volume Bentley (1878) edition: Vol. 1, Vol. 2, Vol. 3.

In the second volume, book-and-chapter numbering diverges from the three-volume (periodical and book) versions; things fall back into alignment near the end:

3 volumes		2 volumes
IV	IV	II . I	I
	V-VII		II-IV
V	I		V
	II-IV		VI-VIII
	V-VIII		IX-XII
	IX		XIII
VI	I-VI	II . II	I-VI

Page numbers in [brackets] indicate full-page illustrations that have been moved to the nearest paragraph break.

Typographical errors are marked with mouse-hover popups and are listed again at the end of each chapter. The word “invisible” means that the letter or punctuation mark is missing, but there is an appropriately sized blank space.