A wide range of new opportunities for playing in ‘public’ emerged after mid-century and awaited the venturesome amateur guitar-player who could sing, especially young and unmarried female player who might come from every social class above the labouring poor. Social clubs, political societies such as the Primrose League, and sports clubs for tennis, cycling, golf and cricket mounted regular (or at least annual) entertainments which provided amateur singers using guitars with something to play for in every sense of the expression. Their instrument seemed agreeably novel; so did their art of self-accompaniment as they faced the audience directly in a manner that few self-accompanying singers using a pianoforte could hope to do. In addition there were new contexts for amateur performance that have almost been in entirely overlooked by historians of nineteenth-century music, notably the ‘Penny Reading’ where a wide variety of vocal and instrumental music was performed, reaching down to the level of small villages in parish halls and school rooms, often to raise funds for some charitable or philanthropic purpose.