Phonograph. March Brillante.
Boston, Massachusetts: White, Smith and Company, 1878. Folio, 13 ½ x 10 ½ inches. 6 pp. Wraps fully split else near fine with some very light foxing and soiling to wrap, overall very attractive. Very good. Item #List3694
An early phonograph-related sheet associated with the French soprano Marie Roze (née Hippolyte Ponsin, 1846–1926), whose participation in early demonstrations of Thomas Edison’s tinfoil phonograph was widely publicized in 1878. Contemporary reports identify Roze as the “celebrated prima donna” depicted singing into the phonograph in an engraving produced for Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (New York, April 20, 1878), following a demonstration of the machine at Steinway Hall earlier that year. The same engraving was subsequently reused across multiple promotional formats, including tickets to phonograph exhibitions, advertising circulars, and early phonograph-themed sheet music such as Phonograph. March Brillante.
Related promotional material includes a poster advertising exhibitions of Edison’s new tinfoil phonograph in Toronto on May 28, 1878, which employs the identical image of the prima donna singing into the apparatus beneath the heading “Edison’s Phonograph!” The poster announces daily demonstrations featuring singing, speech, and explanatory lectures, illustrating the standardized visual language used to market the invention during its first year of public exhibition.[1]
Roze, an internationally known operatic soprano who later became Mrs. Henry Mapleson, was connected with early phonograph demonstrations intended to showcase the recording and playback of trained vocal performance. The engraving linking her image to the machine circulated widely in print culture during 1878, appearing in illustrated journalism and promotional ephemera tied to touring exhibitions. Overall a very nice copy of what was an iconic image at the time. Blake was a highly prolific composer of over 5,000 songs, the most famous of which is Rock-a-Bye Baby. OCLC locates two copies with different entries, at Baylor and BYU.
[1] Arthur Zimmerman, “The Early Phonographic Craze in Ontario, 1878–92,” Antique Phonograph News, https://www.capsnews.org/apn2022-3.htm, accessed February 24, 2026.
Price: $600.00