WILLIAM C. HONEYMAN
Honeyman pictured on the cover of Sco Wsh Violin Makers: Past and Present (1899)
ALL IMAGES EXCEPT SPOHR PORTRAIT COURTESY KEVIN MACDONALD
Before there was The Strad magazine, before there was Sherlock Holmes, there was William C. Honeyman (1845-1919), violinist, journalist and mystery writer. Honeyman was very much a Scottish personality: leader of the Leith Theatre orchestra and the Dundee Symphony Orchestra, columnist and sometimes editor of the Dundee-based People’s Friend magazine for 37 years (1872-1909), and author of Scottish Violin Makers: Past and Present (1899). Importantly, prior to The Strads 1890 debut, his pioneering articles and violin column in The People’s Friend, as well as two initial violin how-to books (The Violin: How to Master It, 1881; The Secrets of Violin Playing, 1890), fed a hunger for information by non-professional players during the Victorian violin fever that swept across all economic classes in Britain.