(fl 1737–c1782). English engraver, print-seller and publisher in London. From 1737 until about 1762 he kept a music and print shop in Holborn from which he issued several notable books of songs with pictorial embellishments heading each piece. The earliest, the two-volume Calliope, or English Harmony, was issued from 1737 by and for the engraver in periodical numbers of eight octavo pages each at sixpence per number. The first volume of 25 numbers was completed in 1739; the parts of the second volume began to appear in the same year, though it was probably not finished until about 1746. John Simpson brought out second issues of volume one in 1740 and of volume two in 1747. Late in 1741 Roberts and John Johnson (successor to the Wrights), were accused by Thomas Arne of violating his copyright by printing some of his songs in the second volume of Calliope. The case did not go to trial but no Arne songs appeared in later numbers. The plates later came into the possession of Longman & Broderip, who reprinted from them about 1780. In 1743 Roberts published The New Calliope with an inscription to Handel on the title-page and a frontispiece showing Milton and Handel.
Roberts is also known for Clio and Euterpe, or British Harmony which was similar in style to Calliope, and issued by him in parts (from 1756) and in two volumes (1758–9). A later edition, dated 1762, had a third volume engraved by Roberts, and a fourth volume was added when John Welcker reissued the work about 1778.
Among other examples of Roberts’s fine ornamental engraving are the dedicatory leaf in Giuseppe Sammartini’s XII sonate op.3 (1743) and the title-page engraving of William Jackson’s Elegies (c1762). Though he is not known to have engraved musical items after about 1762, he continued as a general engraver until at least 1782.
Humphries-SmithMP
F. Kidson: ‘Some Illustrated Music-books of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries: English’, MA, iii (1911–12), 195–208
R.J. Rabin and S. Zohn: ‘Arne, Handel, Walsh, and Music as Intellectual Property: Two Eighteenth-Century Lawsuits’, JRMA, cxx (1995), 112–45
A. Hicks: ‘Handel, Milton and The New Calliope’, Handel Institute Newsletter, viii (1997), [5–7]
FRANK KIDSON, WILLIAM C. SMITH/PETER WARD JONES, DAVID HUNTER