Orpheus Britannicus

Orpheus Britannicus is a collection of songs by Henry Purcell, published posthumously in London in two volumes, the first in 1698 and the second in 1702. In the preface to the first volume, Henry Playford – the printer of the volume and the son of the music publisher John Playford – praises Purcell's setting of English texts. The frontispiece portrait is an engraving by Robert White from a painting by or after the studio of John Closterman, now in the National Portrait Gallery in London.