Hart's 30th Set — from "Songs of the Minstrels" — bilingual Primo/Secondo 5-figure London quadrille (Le Pantalon, The Archers, Bold Robin Hood, The Target, The Minstrels Waltz Finale)

Dance manual/reference by Hart (London publisher; full imprint not given on engraved card; possibly Joseph Hart of London who published quadrille-set arrangements in the 1830s-1840s). Undated; estimated c.1840 from (i) the 'Songs of the Minstrels' theme — Christy's-Minstrels and the Virginia-Minstrels minstrel-show format originated 1843, but the 'Minstrel-Songs' theme as ballroom music was current from c.1838 onward; (ii) the Primo / Secondo (4-hand piano) layout typical of c.1835-1845 London ballroom sheet-music engraving; (iii) the inclusion of a 'Minstrels Waltz' finale rather than a Galop or Trenise Finale, consistent with the late-1830s/early-1840s waltz-finale fashion in London quadrille publishing. Source: Richard Powers collection (POWERS/ABBYY TXT/Hart_30th_Set.txt — 43 lines OCR; engraved sheet-music card with both PRIMO (treble) and SECONDO (bass) parts; harp-solo notation 'The Harp solos (inserted in the smaller notes) are only to be played upon the Piano-forte when the Harp part is not performed on the proper Instrument'). Five-figure structure: (1) Le Pantalon — Four half right and left, the four others the same, half promenade all 8, turn partners round to places, ladies chain, ladies set to gentlemen on right and gents to ladies on left and turn to places; (2) The Archers — Opposite Lady and Gent forward and back, chassez to right and left, advance four and retire, change partners, advance again and retire and resume partners; (3) Bold Robin Hood — Opposite Lady and Gent cross giving right hand, back giving left, advance and retire back to back, opposite couple figure to the side, chassez ouvert forming two lines, advance and retire and turn to places (MINORE — minor-key middle figure, with chassez croisez quatre and Trenise figure named); (4) The Target — Grand Promenade, lady with her partner forward and back, turn with right hand and form line of 3 with side couples opposite each other, bottom couple promenade inside the quadrille and form line of four, advance and retire all 8 and turn to places; (5) The Minstrels Waltz Finale — waltz coda finale (figure details truncated in OCR; characteristic late-1830s/early-1840s London waltz-finale convention combining waltz round with quadrille-set re-formation). 'Hart's 30th Set' indicates this is the 30th-numbered set of quadrilles published by Hart — confirming the publisher's prolific 1830s-1840s London quadrille-set output (no other Hart sets currently in corpus by serial number, though POWERS-c1830-HART-ROYALMAZOURKAS represents another Hart imprint of the same era). Historical value: first-corpus 'Songs of the Minstrels' themed London quadrille — documents the early-minstrel-music infiltration into ballroom culture before the American minstrel-show explosion of the mid-1840s. The 'Bold Robin Hood' MINORE figure is unusual — minor-key middle figures are characteristic of mid-19th-century Continental quadrille publishing but rare in London. Has_Step_Detail=Partial (figure-level call notation in English plus French step-name vocabulary [chassez ouvert, chassez croisez, Trenise]; bar-counts implicit via Primo/Secondo bar structure; no CBM/sway/rise-and-fall — pre-Silvester London ballroom vocabulary). (1840). Imported from local collection.