Although the book Christmas Carols New and Old contains no
publication date, the date is included in the following note from Percy
Dearmer’s Preface to The Oxford Book of Carols, Oxford University Press,
1928, pp. xvi-xvii.
The second chapter of the revival [of the carol] in
the nineteenth century opens in 1871 with the publication of forty-two Christmas
Carols New and Old by the Rev. H. R. Bramley, Fellow of Magdalen College,
Oxford, and Dr. John Stainer, then organist of the college.
The influence of this book was enormous: it placed in the hands
of the clergy…a really practicable tool, which came into general use, and is
still in use after nearly sixty years.
The great service done by this famous collection was that it brought
thirteen traditional carols, with their proper music, into general use at
once.…It is…mainly to Bramley and Stainer that we owe the restoration of the
carol…
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