The Book of the Erinyes

In early January I’m planning to print a number of Broadsides as related side-projects of the Book of the Erinyes.

As well as being appropriate to the whole atmosphere of the artwork, I’m also drawn to the often scurrilous history of Broadsides, from the 16^th century to the mid-19^th century. Their ephemeral nature—and the fact that they have been marginalised by some as “low” culture—means that we know far less about them than we should.

Anyway, I thought some of you might also be interested in what I’ve managed to discover:

Broadsides—sometimes called Broadsheets—are large sheets of paper printed on one side only, designed to be pasted onto public house walls or sold by street-vendors (traditionally for one penny).  They ranged from 13″ × 16″ (“foolscap” size) to over 5 feet in length.

They were the medium of choice for street literature from the 16^th century to the 19^th century, and were probably the very first “mass-media”. They fell out of use when Newspapers dropped in price enough to be affordable by common people.

According to the National Library of Scotland:

For almost 300 years until the mid-19^th century, broadsides filled the place occupied today by the tabloid press.

Originally they were single sheets of paper, printed on one side only, designed to be read unfolded and posted up in public places.

At first they were used for the printing of royal proclamations, acts, and official notices. Later they became a vehicle for political agitation and what is now known as ‘popular culture’, such as ballads and scaffold speeches.

Ballads were a popular subject for broadsides (and seem to be the most documented subject), but they covered a wider variety of material including:

• political comment & satire
• advertisements for merchandise
• news (frequently macabre) and recent history
• almanacs (annually-published tables of information about particular dates in the year)
• elegies
• poems

…often crudely illustrated with woodcuts (and later with engravings).

In her book A Culture of Fact: England, 1550–1720, Barbara J. Shapiro confirms the appetite for the macabre and sensational in the Broadsides:

…broadsides tended to report the unusual, the “monstrous,” and the sensational.  Strange animals, unusual weather, “monstrous” human or animal births, criminal behavior, or accounts of witchcraft were among the most common items of broadside “news” hawked on the streets of London.  Like the modern tabloid, these broadsides emphasized crime, violence, and wonderful cures. The sensational or “strange but true” were staples of broadside news and newsbooks.

In Printing and Parenting in Early Modern England, Douglas A. Brooks states:

For a penny, customers could purchase a religious primer, an account of the King of Scotland’s murder, a prayer for Queen Elizabeth, a description of a town-leveling fire, an epitaph of a London alderman, the complaint of a sinner, the ‘fantasies of a troubled man’s head’, or a political ‘flyting’ of a disgraced courtier—all inscribed in ballad verse and printed on a single sheet of paper.

The use of broadsides for advertising merchandise seems to have started with publishers printing broadsides listing their books.

I haven’t managed to find much information about advertising broadsides until the mid 19^th century. There exist quite a few collections of American advertising broadsides from the 1840s onwards — the Duke University collection (link below) is a good example.

I am presuming that this apparent lack of advertising broadsides until the mid 19^th century is actually because these items have not been preserved.

While Ballad Broadsides have long been collected—diarist Samuel Pepys collected over 1800 of them!—I suspect that advertising broadsides were considered as disposable as the many cheaply-printed flyers for double-glazing or takeaway food that are posted through my letterbox every day.

However if anyone does have any scans of, or information about, advertising broadsides from the 17^th or 18^th centuries then do please let me know.

Bibliography & Links

Related Books:

• Preston, Cathy L., and Preston, Michael J. (Editors). The Other Print Tradition: Essays on Chapbooks, Broadsides, and Related Ephemera. London: Routledge, 1995. Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk
• Shepard, Leslie. History of Street Literature: The Story of Broadside Ballads, Chapbooks, Proclamations, News-sheets, Election Bills, Tracts, Pamphlets, Cocks, Catchpennies and Other Ephemera.  Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 1973.  Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk

Websites:

• The history of the broadside. From The Cambridge History of English and American Literature: An Encyclopedia in Eighteen Volumes, Volume 7 — Cavalier and Puritan, XVI. The Advent of Modern Thought in Popular Literature.
• The Word on the Street — Broadsides at the National Library of Scotland
• Broadsides (Special Collections, University of Glasgow)
• An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera (Rare Book and Special Collections Division, US Library of Congress)
• American Advertising Broadsides — from Duke University’s Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library
• Broadsides from the Colonial Era to the Present at the South Caroliniana Library, University of South Carolina Thomas Cooper Library’s Digital Collections

I’m making very good progress with the Letterpress part of the Book of the Erinyes at the moment — I’m managing to fit in 2 sessions of work at Brighton Independent Printmaking each week, and I’m really on a roll.

Proof prints for chapters 6 and 7 below (click through to see larger versions & leave comments):

I thought I’d share a very short video I put together from some clips of me printing out a page of the Book of the Erinyes.

At some point in the not-too-distant future I’ll put together something a bit better, but in the meantime:

I’ve been putting some hours into the Letterpress side of the Book of the Erinyes recently, and have made a fair bit of progress.

Yesterday evening I managed to print out the text for the first section (there’s only one page of text per section).

I’d spent an evening the previous week meticulously setting most of the type (shown inked up and sitting on the press, below), which just left me to finish it off this week and start printing.

After a handful of adjustments for typos or overly-worn letters I was lucky enough to get a decent print on the first real attempt.

In some ways it’s strange — I could type and print the text for this page on my computer in less than five minutes, so why spend six hours slowly picking each individual letter, arrangingthem, inking it up, running test prints…?

The answer is in the finished result.  If you’ve ever seen a piece of letterpress-printed type you’ll have noticed the way the metal letters slightly indent the paper and the shine of the oil-based ink (it sparkles just a bit when it catches the light).

The Book of the Erinyes is being printed on a heavy (220gm) cartridge paper, which is probably the thickest paper I can get away with putting through the press. The body text is 12pt Goudy Old Style, with larger sizes of the same font being used for headings.

The combination of letterpress printed type and a good quality paper makes the finished page really enjoyable to handle and hold.  I was thinking of scanning a copy, but a scan just can’t catch the tactile qualities of the paper or the look of oil-based ink sitting on the surface of it.

I’m happy to say that I’ve printed out the title and half-title pages.

On Wednesday at the Letterpress workshop I monopolised the press to run off 30 copies of each (I’ve finalised the limited edition to 30 copies).

Due to the nature of Letterpress there are slight variations between each one — differing amounts and distributions of ink because of how I inked the text on each pass.  This is one of the things I really like about Letterpress.

Next up will be the Contents page (which I’ve already set, and is waiting in a galley) and the first actual page of the book.

I’ve just got back from this week’s letterpress workshop where I managed to print some proofs (photo below) of the title and half-title pages of the Book of the Erinyes.

These two pages will make up the first signature of the book.  The signatures only consist of 2 sheets (8 pages in total, Crown Quarto size — 7½″ x 10″) because of the thickness of the 220gm cartridge paper I’m printing on.

The half-title page is set in 48pt Goudy, and the title page is in various smaller Goudy & Goudy Italic type with a decorative block.

link to high resolution scan of title page (JPEG ~415KB)

Last year I did an evening course in Letterpress Printing at the Brighton Independent Printmaking centre. Last week Les Ellis, the course tutor, invited me back for a 4-evening follow-on course where I could work on my own project, but with Les Ellis and colleague John Packer on hand to refresh my memory and provide expert advice.

I’ve just got back from the first of these four 3-hour Letterpress Printing workshops, and I’m happy to say that I managed to remember most of what I was taught on last year’s course.

This evening I manage to get the half-title and title pages hand-composited and locked into chases, ready for proofing and printing next week.

The half-title page is set in 48pt Goudy, while the title page is a mixture of 30pt Goudy (for the title), 24pt Goudy Italic (for the subtitle), and some 12pt Goudy for the small print.  It also includes a very nice decorative block.  I hope to be able to show you the results next week.

I’m really pleased with the progress today — I managed to get more done in one session than I’d hoped. Next week’s session can’t come soon enough.