English family of music publishers. The firm was started by John Preston (d Jan 1798), who by about 1774 was established as a guitar and violin maker in London. In 1789 his son Thomas entered the business, and continued it alone after his father's death until about 1834, when it was acquired by Coventry & hollier.
The Preston firm rapidly rose to become one of the most flourishing in the trade. Its publications covered music of every kind, and included a long annual series of country dances begun in 1786, popular operas by Arnold, Hook and Reeve, and works such as Bunting's General Collection of the Ancient Irish Music (1796) and J.S. Smith's collection Musica antiqua (1812). It was also the printer of George Thomson's collections of national songs from 1793. In addition the Preston firm bought the plates and stock of several other firms, including Robert Bremner (1789), Thomas Skillern the elder (c1803), H. Wright (c1803), and Wilkinson & Co. (c1810). From these it did a vast reprint business, the most notable items of which were oratorios and other works of Handel acquired from H. Wright (formerly Wright & Wilkinson), the successor of Walsh and Randall.
Humphries-SmithMP
KidsonBMP
C. Hopkinson and C.B. Oldman: ‘Thomson's Collections of National Song’, Edinburgh Bibliographical Society Transactions, ii/1 (1940), 1–64; addenda et corrigenda, iii/2 (1954), 123–4
B.W. Harvey: The Violin Family and its Makers in the British Isles (Oxford, 1995)
FRANK KIDSON/WILLIAM C. SMITH/PETER WARD JONES