Blunt, Janet

(1859-1950)

   The daughter of a General Charles Harris Blunt, Janet spent the first 30 years of her life in India, and returned to England in 1892, settling at Halle Place, Adderbury, Oxfordshire, where she lived for the rest of her life. In many ways the typical educated, middle-class leisured lady of her time, Blunt became interested in the folk *song and *dance movement and about 1910 started collecting songs from local villagers, and arranged for Cecil *Sharp to note the Adderbury morris dances in 1919; she was also an active country dance teacher in the local school and elsewhere. She made little attempt to publish her collection, but her manuscripts were eventually donated to the *English Folk Dance and Song Society and are now housed in the *Vaughan Williams Memorial Library.

   ■ Michael Pickering, Village Song and Culture (1982); Michael Pickering, FMJ 3:2 (1976), 114-57.