Under the nom de plume of Claribel, Charlotte Alington Barnard (1830-1869) composed over 100 songs and became one of the most successful composers in 1860s England. Her works were aimed at drawing-room entertaiment and also widely performed at amateur music nights and "ballad-concerts."

However, with her success came a fierce backlash from the trade press. Publications like The Orchestra and The Athenaeum decried the profusion of "Claribel-ware," occasionally outright calling the music "trash" and particularly protesting the royalties agreement entered into by Claribel, her publisher Boosey, and their frequent collaborator Madame Charlotte Sainton-Dolby.

Though Claribel's career lasted but a decade, cut short by her untimely death from typhoid fever in 1869, she still had a massive impact on the business of music and on Victorian music cultures -- an impact that has heretofore been sorely underexplored. This site will be the first step in rectifying that oversight.

Because this is only a first step, the scope of what's covered here is necessarily limited. I'm primarily a communications and media scholar, not a musicologist or a formally trained historian. As such, for now I have focused this site's contents on some of the most important points in Claribel's career, as narrated in the contemporary musical press, and I've also provided links to further reading.