In this fresh contribution to the discussion of the chant revival in France in the late nineteenth century, Katharine Ellis employs a selection of archival sources which have heretofore escaped widespread attention. Not only does she illuminate previously underreported intrigues in the French Benedictine congregation but she also shows, in a more general sense, that the history of sacred music editing and the revival of plainchant can offer insights into the relationship between Church and State in fin-de-siècle France. Ellis introduces an ‘invisible man’, Auguste Pécoul, former novice of the Abbaye-de-Saint-Pierre at Solesmes and French diplomat, whose behind-the-scenes machinations, epistolary invective and knowledge of both Church and republican preoccupations helped to forward the Solesmes agenda at a time when both the scholarly investigation of the chant repertory and the publication of performing editions for wider use had reached critical turning points. Pécoul helped to overthrow the Vatican monopoly granted to the German publisher Pustet in favour of new editions which were being researched and produced by his former Solesmes contemporaries, and in the preparations for a new Vatican edition of chant books held the banner for his friend Dom Joseph Pothier. Ellis rightly describes the process of producing this volume, beginning with documents illustrating a dispute between government bureaucrats and unions in the printing trade and leading to deeper scheming among the Benedictine players and Pécoul, the ‘hidden connection’, as very much a ‘detective investigation’. Some of the documents even illustrate Pécoul's penchant for noms-de-plume and other code-names for some of his subjects of derision. I suspect that some proponents of the existing narrative of the chant revival may see this monograph as addressing a peripheral development meriting a shorter treatment, but this is certainly not the case. Ellis needed to introduce much background for the less well informed, and also to contradict some obvious assumptions. Through expert archival work, the connexions between politics and plainchant, and the deep-seated, necessary changes in perspective on the reform of chant at the turn of the century, are elegantly and unambiguously presented. The influences of these new ideas on the existing historical narrative may be unambiguously identified. Throughout the volume, Ellis has successfully argued for the importance of Pécoul and his correspondence in the wider world of the chant revival, and identified some areas which previous modern scholarship has treated lightly. In addition to these new contributions, Ellis demonstrates a firm and influential hold on the historiographical picture. With a mind to the present day, she also reflects explicitly on the problem, current both for fin-de-siècle Solesmes editions and for modern monographs, of credit for and ownership of intellectual property for scholars who have moved between institutions, issues which are not without interest in the present academic climate.