History of Mandolin

[yankees1]

Are there any books written on history of the mandolin that are available for purchase ?

[Jim Garber]

Depends on how far you want to go back and how recent as well. These two are among the best among the scholarly and historical, not too much on bluegrass and modern.

The Early Mandolin: The Mandolino and the Neapolitan Mandoline

The Classical Mandolin

There are also numerous guitar books that have mentions of mandolin notable books on Martin Washburn and Gibson or other specific brands but you asked a more general question.

[yankees1]

Depends on how far you want to go back and how recent as well. These two are among the best among the scholarly and historical, not too much on bluegrass and modern.

The Early Mandolin: The Mandolino and the Neapolitan Mandoline

The Classical Mandolin

There are also numerous guitar books that have mentions of mandolin notable books on Martin Washburn and Gibson or other specific brands but you asked a more general question.

Thanks Jim! I was thinking more about the 20th century mandolin and its evolution from Old time up to and beyond the Bluegrass period. If this does not exist, this would be a great project for someone!

[Jim Garber]

Ah, non-classical. Prob more like various articles in the Old Time Herald and some of the bluegrass mags. Of course, mandolin is a relatively minor instrument in old time music's history until more prominence in some of the brother groups and into bluegrass. I don't know offhand of any book that would only cover mandolin in those early years.

[MikeEdgerton]

The book Acoustic Guitars and other Fretted Instruments by George Gruhn is a nice coffee table book that has a lot of mandolins in it but certainly as shown by the name isn't mandolin specific.

[Jim Garber]

A pretty thorough overview of the mandolin in all various facets from acousticmusic.org.

History of music played on the mandolin in the US starts at Mandolins in The United States of America.