The inspiration for this book came from a series of conversations which suggested that the various sources of Elgar's earnings were worth investigating. After some initial research and encouragement, the subject expanded to a consideration of the economic circumstances of composers generally in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and to a comparison of their earnings with other creative artists.

Much use has been made of previously unresearched primary source material, most notably the Novello Business Archive at the British Library, the Boosey & Hawkes Archive at the Royal College of Music, the Performing Right Society Archives and the George Bernard Shaw Business Papers at the London School of Economics and Social Sciences. It can thus be said that an entirely new light is shed on Elgar's financial affairs and the background to them.

The words ‘copyright’, ‘royalty’ and ‘performing right’ recur throughout this book and need explanation. From 1842, British composers' works were protected in law by two rights, the copyright and the performing right, which were registered separately at Stationers' Hall. In order for the works to be published, the norm was to assign these two rights to the music publisher. The music publisher usually bought the copyright outright, although an alternative was to share the proceeds of sheet music sales with the composer through a system of royalty payments based on a percentage. By the turn of the century, payments to a composer of both a copyright and a royalty became possible.