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.