Refer to The 19th Century of the Piano, Part 2.  "Perhaps the greatest mystery in the history of piano music is 19th-century Britain," states Minoru Nishihara, a specialist in 19th-century music and society (Minoru Nishihara, The 19th Century of the Piano, Part 2). Having initiated the Industrial Revolution ahead of other European nations, Britain also saw a dramatic development in its piano industry, led by manufacturers such as Broadwood and Clementi. It is well known that the French piano manufacturer Sébastien Érard incorporated new inventions into the piano action structure, modeling it after the "English action." Furthermore, musicians from the Continent, including Handel, Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Moscheles, frequently visited and performed there. However, today, the existence of composers active within Britain is largely unknown.

  Henry Charles Lunn was one such musician active in the British piano scene. Born in London in 1817, Lunn was a musician who spent almost his entire career active solely in Britain. Due to a lack of specialized research, little is known about his education. However, it is certain that he was associated with the Royal Academy of Music, a music education institution that opened in 1823.

  By 1840, Lunn, then in his twenties, had already begun his activities as a composer, and there are records of his songs being sung by students of this Academy. By the mid-1840s, he became a member of the British Academy and gained attention with his collection of essays, Musings of a Musician: A Series of Popular Sketches Illustrative of Musical Matters and Musical People (preface 1846). This work satirically depicted aspects of Britain's unique musical culture, addressing themes related to music, musicians, instruments, society, and class. A second edition was published in 1849. Documents from the 1860s indicate that the title "Professor at the Royal Academy of Music" was added to Lunn's credentials. From this period onwards, throughout the 1860s and 1870s, Lunn published edited scores of Haydn, Mozart, Clementi, and Dussek. Lunn continued his writing activities thereafter, addressing aesthetic and social issues in music in periodical music magazines.

  The British Library holds over 30 of Lunn's works. With the exception of a few songs, all are works for piano. All are from the 1850s onwards, and their titles are typical salon pieces of the late 19th century, combining poetic phrases with genre names, such as The Prayer by the Sea (1862), Voices of the Night – A Meditation (1874), and Boat Song (1878).