Produced for the Christmas market in 1878, this 475-page anthology is an excellent example of the high standard of presentation and engraving associated at the time with the firm of Augener & Co.  This long-lived business – it survived independently until 1962 – had been setup by the German-born publisher George Augener (1830-1915) in 1855.  In the mid-1860s Augener began an association with the distinguished Viennese pianist and teacher Ernst Pauer (1826-1905), who had settled in London in 1851.  Pauer, whose own teachers had included F. X. W. Mozart (Mozart’s son), was to become an important broad-based influence on British piano playing, successively holding the major teaching posts at the Royal Academy of Music, National Training School and Royal College of Music. His numerous educational works, attractive arrangements and impeccably edited texts in octavo format of the standard piano repertoire were fundamental to the success of the Augener edition.