Henry Burstow (1826–1916) was a shoemaker and bellringer from Horsham, Sussex, best known for his vast repertoire of songs, many of which were collected in the folksong revival of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

[5] Shoemaking paid poorly, especially as ready made shoes began to undercut the market,[6] and in 1907 Burstow and his wife were facing the prospect of the workhouse.

William Albery (1865-1950), a saddler, organized a fund to provide a pension and also collected the Reminiscences, editing them and arranging for their publication to benefit Burstow.

Burstow's chief talent was a remarkably strong memory, as he himself was well aware:[7] Very soon after I was born I began to develop a faculty with which I may say, without boasting, I was endowed in an extraordinary degree.

[11] In his enthusiasm, he himself pursued songs very much as a collector:[12]He once set his heart upon learning a very long ballad "off" a fellow bell-ringer, a ploughman in a neighbouring village.

Burstow's repertoire contained many folksongs as understood by the collectors of the time, but also much unwanted material from known and published composers and from relatively recent broadside ballads.

Broadwood's account of folksong collecting gives a picture of this poor fit:[12]We must listen with becoming reverence to "Silver Threads amongst the Golden," to Eliza Cook's "Old Armchair," or to "Sweet Alice, Ben Bolt"; we must wag our pencil hypocritically over our music-paper should we wish later to hear the ballad of "Long Lamkin," "Lord Thomas and Fair Eleanor," "Death and the Lady," or the like.

And we must never take for granted that a dirge on Napoleon, or the lamentation of a convict hanged a few years ago, can be skipped, for modern doggerel is often wedded to the oldest tunes.

[18] Among many interesting details of rural town life, the book describes poverty-inspired unrest in the 1830s and the local children's enthusiasm for the cavalry billeted there to suppress it;[19] the reform election of 1832 and the disorderly conduct of that and other elections;[20] the "Beggar pooker", employed by the town to move on beggars and equipped for this with a six-foot pole;[21] seasonal celebrations, most notably St. Crispin's Day, on which an effigy of a townsperson who had attracted disapproval would be hung from a pub's signpost until 5 November, when it would be taken down and burnt.