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