Picture the Songs reproduces 100 sheet music covers from the author's own collection - the most important private collection in the United States. Each lithograph, chosen to illustrate some aspect of the life of the period, is accompanied by a facing page of text, which comments on the words and music, and the events that prompted them, as well as on the illustration itself. Many American homes during the last century had a piano, and music was relatively inexpensive. Thus, sheet music was the medium through which lithography was first introduced to a multitude of Americans. This collection presents, in chronological order, the work of fifty lithographers and such well-known artists as Winslow Homer, Fitz Hugh Lane, and James McNeill Whistler...