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About This Book (this is volume 2 of 2)
The Espérance Club, and the Maison Espérance dressmaking cooperative, were founded in the mid-1890s by Emmeline Pethick-Lawrence and Mary Neal in response to distressing conditions for girls in the London dress trade. Mary Neal had become fascinated by the folk songs and dances being collected by Cecil Sharp, and invited some traditional dancers to teach morris dancing to the young women of the Espérance Club. Thus was born the Espérance Morris, which inspired a modern London women's side, New Esperance Morris. ~
THE welcome given to the first volume of the " Esperance Morris Book," and the rapid growth of the movement for the revival of our English folk dance, has made the preparation of this second volume a delightful task. The story of the origin of the revival of the morris dance, and the unique part taken in that revival by the members of the Esperance Club, needs no re-telling to-day. It is, perhaps, not so generally known that until after the official sanction of the Morris dance by the Board of Education and its inclusion in the school curriculum, the instructors sent out by the Esperance Club were the only ones who had been directly taught by country dancers, and that they—and they only—had up till that time carried the dances throughout the length and breadth of England.
MARY NEAL.