The Southern Harmony
& The Sacred Harp

Southern Harmony Editions:

The Southern Harmony, William Walker

1st ed. (1835): Archive.org
1st ed. Corrected (1838):
[2nd ed.] Corrected (1840): VEMP [1840] / Archive.org [1845]
[3rd ed.] (1847)
[4th ed.] New ed. (1847): Archive.org
[5th ed.] New ed. (1854): VEMP
Facsimile Ed. (1993)

Southern & Western Pocket Harmonist (1845): Archive.org [1860]

The Christian Harmony (1867): Archive.org

Revisions in 1873, 1901, 1954, 1958, 1994, 2002, 2010, 2015

Sacred Harp Editions:

The Sacred Harp, B.F. White, Elisha J. King

1st ed. (1844): VEMP
2nd ed. (1850): VEMP
3rd ed. (1859): VEMP
Broadman Facsimile (1968):
4th ed. (1870): Sounding Spirit

New Sacred Harp (1884): VEMP

The Sacred Harp, edited by W.M. Cooper (1902):

Revisions in 1909, 1927, 1949, 1960, 1992, 2000, 2006, and 2012

The Sacred Harp, edited by J.L. White

5th ed. (1909): Sacred Harp Museum
5th ed. (1910): Sounding Spirit
4th ed. with Suppl. (1911): Sounding Spirit

Original Sacred Harp, J.S. James (1911): HathiTrust | Sounding Spirit

Centennial Ed. (2015): Sacred Harp

Original Sacred Harp: Denson Revision (1936)

Revisions in 1960, 1966, and 1971

The Sacred Harp (1991):

The Sacred Harp (2025): Sacred Harp

See also:

Union Harp and History of Songs, J.S. James (1909): Archive.org | Sounding Spirit

Sacred Hymns and Tunes, J.S. James (1913): Sounding Spirit

The Georgian Harmony (2010)

Related Resources:

J.S. James, A Brief History of the Sacred Harp and Its Author, B.F. White, Sr., and Contributors (Douglasville, GA: NewSouth, 1904): PDF

J.S. James, An Explanation of the Sacred Harp Printed and Published by B.F. White and E.J. King in 1844 (Atlanta: Gordon W. Donaldson, 1920).

George Pullen Jackson, “The Story of the Sacred Harp, 1844–1944,” in The Sacred Harp, facsimile ed. (1964).

Buell E. Cobb, Jr., The Sacred Harp: A Tradition and Its Music (Athens, Georgia, 1978).

Harry Eskew, “William Walker's ‘Southern Harmony’: Its Basic Editions,” Latin American Music Review, vol. 7, no. 2 (Autumn/Winter, 1986), pp. 137–148.

Harry Eskew, “Southern Harmony and Its Era,” The Hymn, vol. 41, no. 4 (1990), pp. 28–34: HathiTrust

John Bealle, Public Worship, Private Faith: Sacred Harp and American Folksong (1997): Amazon

Harry Eskew, “Georgia Origins of The Sacred Harp,” Viewpoints: Georgia Baptist History, vol. 20 (Dec. 2006), pp. 25–33.

Kiri Miller, Traveling Home: Sacred Harp Singing and American Pluralism (2007): Amazon

Chloe Webb, Legacy of the Sacred Harp (2010): Amazon

David Warren Steel & Richard Hulan, The Makers of the Sacred Harp (Urbana: University of Illinois, 2010): Amazon
Errata: https://home.olemiss.edu/~mudws/errata.html

Laura Clawson, I Belong to This Band, Hallelujah!: Community, Spirituality, and Tradition among Sacred Harp Singers (2011): Amazon

Robert L. Vaughn, Songs Before Unknown: A Companion to The Sacred Harp, Revised Cooper Edition, 2012 (Mt. Enterprise, TX: Waymark Publications, 2015): Hollow Square

Kathryn Eastburn, Sacred Feast: Reflections on Sacred Harp Singing and Dinner on the Ground (2013): Amazon

Canterbury Dictionary of Hymnology: Southern Harmony | William Walker | Sacred Harp | B.F. White | Elisha J. King

Sacred Harp Publishing: https://sacredharp.com/