If a stranger had asked Elgar ‘How do you compose?’ they would be very lucky to have received a reasoned answer. More likely, they might have been met with a curt rebuff or a tirade of banter. Yet Elgar might have responded more seriously to the question if he felt that the person was genuinely sympathetic to his own personality as well as to his music. Fortunately, we do not have to rely on anecdotes to answer this question. Instead, we have a plethora of documentary manuscript materials: sketchbooks, working sketches, short scores, full scores and sets of corrected proofs from which we can follow the creative habits of his entire life and gain invaluable perspectives on his stylistic growth from juvenilia to maturity. However, there have been some losses, as his daughter Carice noted when he moved from Severn House, Hampstead in July 1921, just over a year after the death of Lady Elgar: ‘Very busy day – turning out stationery cupboard – Father went through all his sketches MSS etc. sad work. Destroyed much & got it all in order. He spent a second day at the task.’

Elgar's manuscripts are not the only answer to our initial question: he was not alone among the composers of his age, nor since, who are conveniently labelled ‘Romantic’ on account of their sincere indebtedness to the stimuli they received from environments and literature. It was to Robert J. Buckley that Elgar revealed the early importance of environment: