During the late 1700s and early 1800s, there were several series of dance books (music + dance figures), mostly published in London, with various editors arranging each year's publication. Most of them contained 24 tunes with a description of a dance for each, and had a title like "Twenty Four Country Dances for the Year ...". A few had different numbers of dances, usually 12, and there were other variations on the title. The phrase "Dances for the Year" is good for finding them via search sites. I've been slowly finding photo images of them online, making ABC transcriptions, and putting them online here.

It was common to also publish collections every few years that combine the publisher's earlier annual dance booklets, plus perhaps a few well-known dances in addition. Those I've put in directories named for the editor/publisher, in the parent directory to this one.

I've transcribed tunes from various books in the series, and various other people have sent me their transcriptions. I've concentrated on including the dance descriptions that are present in many of these booklets, something that most musicians seem to ignore for some reason.

ABC versions of many of these tunes were made by Andrew Kuntz of Fiddler's Companion fame. Andrew has done us a real service by digging up the history of thousands of tunes, and putting it all online for easy access. His more recent incarnation of his database is now at tunearch.org, and is set up as a wiki, so anyone can get an account and contribute information.

If you have an ABC of any of the tunes in these collections, could you send me a copy? Be sure to give yourself credit in a Z: header line. Also, if you have a printed copy or photocopy of any of these collections not transcribed yet, could you contact me and let me know how to get a copy?

Here are a few online lists of the known source files for similar publications:

• Folkopedia: List of historical tunebooks, some of which are available on the internet
• IMSLP (the International Music Score Library Project) has photocopies of many old collections.
• Vaughan Williams Memorial Library: Historic Dance and Tune books from the British Isles.
• FARNE (the Folk Archive Resource North East) has songs, tunes, recordings and photos from the northeast of England and adjacent areas in Scotland.
• NLS (the National Library of Scotland) is slowly putting many of their extensive archives online, including old music publications.