Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century

http://hyperallergic.com/201120/broadsides-for-broadband-digitizing-the-peoples-literature-of-the-17th-century/[5/14/2015 12:02:13 PM]

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Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing thePeople’s Literature of the 17th Centuryby Allison Meier on May 14, 2015 Tweet0

“A constant wife, a kind wife, / A loving wife, and a fine wife, / Which gives content unto mans life.”(detail) (1630-49), printed by E.P. for F. Coles (all images courtesy Houghton Library)

Considered the “people’s literature” in the 17th century, broadside ballads were sold for apenny or halfpenny, their pairing of a comic or satiric song alongside a woodblockillustration making them popular bawdy amusement across classes. Due to their cheap,mass-produced quality, only about 10,000 English broadside ballads from the whole of the17th century are known to survive, and scholars have long lacked a central researchresource.

“They were printed in the millions,” Patricia Fumerton, professor and director of

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Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century

http://hyperallergic.com/201120/broadsides-for-broadband-digitizing-the-peoples-literature-of-the-17th-century/[5/14/2015 12:02:13 PM]

“STRANGE’S CASE, STRANGLY / ALTERED. /Or, a HUE and CRY after a Strange old Yorkish

Tike full of Black and Blue, Red and Yellow Spots,of a Motley, Dun, Brindled, ill-livered Colour;neither Mastiff nor Mungrel, Tumbler” (click to

enlarge)

the English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA), told Hyperallergic. “You couldn’t walk frompoint A to B in London without hearing ballads sung and hawked on the streets, or seeingthem pasted up on walls. They were even carried far into the countryside by peddlers.They were far more common a form of literature than Shakespeare or the classics weread today.”

The EBBA launched in 2003 at theEarly Modern Center in the University ofCalifornia, Santa Barbara EnglishDepartment. It is currently focused onarchiving over 1,150 broadside balladsfrom Houghton Library at HarvardUniversity. These join recentadditions from the National Library ofScotland’s Crawford Collection, as wellas material from the Pepys Collection atthe University of Cambridge’sMagdalene College, the British Library’sRoxburghe Collection, the University ofGlasgow’s Euing Collection, and theBindley and Britwell collections at theHuntington Library. While broadsides

generally date from between the 16th and 19th centuries, and come mainly from inEngland, Ireland, and later North America, the 17th century is considered their heyday.

One challenge for the EBBA is conveying original context and social meaning. In additionto high-resolution scans, the open-access archive has facsimiles with more legiblemodern transcriptions alongside the messy, old, gothic, black-letter typeface that wasoften quickly set. There are also recordings of singers, unaccompanied as they wouldhave been on the streets, replicating as closely as possible the aural aspect of the ballads.Whether warning of damnation or giving a eulogy for a lost soul, a popular or traditionaltune would be suggested on the broadside for the rhymes. Here’s a full citation page of aHoughton ballad with a facsimile showing the broadside as collected, a facsimiletranscription, a text transcription, and a recording.

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Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century

http://hyperallergic.com/201120/broadsides-for-broadband-digitizing-the-peoples-literature-of-the-17th-century/[5/14/2015 12:02:13 PM]

“A constant wife, a kind wife, / A loving wife, and a fine wife, / Which gives content unto mans life.”(1630-49), printed by E.P. for F. Coles

Facsimile transcription of “A constant wife, a kind wife, / A loving wife, and a fine wife, / Which givescontent unto mans life.” (1630-49), printed by E.P. for F. Coles

“To make this form of cheap print available online for all people to read, see, and hear isto restore them to the masses for whom they were originally intended,” Fumerton said. “Itis also to make available the common person’s vision of their culture, since broadsideballads discuss topics such as sex and marriage in striking open ways not seen in eliteliterature.”

Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century

http://hyperallergic.com/201120/broadsides-for-broadband-digitizing-the-peoples-literature-of-the-17th-century/[5/14/2015 12:02:13 PM]

Themes and topics vary all over the spectrum, from crime to “ballads of the freaky andinexplicable.” You can listen to a jaunty tune on “A True Narrative of the Horrid HellishPopish-Plot,” about “how the Jesuit, Devil, and Pope did agree, our state to destroy and[…] murder our king,” while another conveys the curious case of a dangerous stray dog.One, from 1684-94, features a debate sung between death and a young man, called: “ASeasonable Warning for Youth to Forsake their Sins, and to lead a Religious Life: / LestDeath Surprize them, and Repentance comes too late.” Many have rips and tears frombeing stuck on walls or folded into pockets.

“Once pasted up, they might be whitewashed over. Once handed around and learned,they might be used to line a bird cage or pie plate, or even used as toilet paper,” Fumertonadded. “But today, precisely because ballads in their period were cheap, disposable printaccessible to everyone, few have survived and most libraries value and protect them likejewels.” Through the EBBA, what broadsides made it from the 17th century to the 21stare gradually becoming as accessible as when they were the stories and songs of themasses.

“A True Narrative of the Horrid Hellish Popish-Plot. / To the Tune of Packington’s Pound, The First

Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century

http://hyperallergic.com/201120/broadsides-for-broadband-digitizing-the-peoples-literature-of-the-17th-century/[5/14/2015 12:02:13 PM]

Part” (click to enlarge)

“TIMES PRECIOUS JEWEL, / OR, / A DIALOGUE between a / YOUNG-MAN and DEATH. / BEING/ A Seasonable Warning for Youth to Forsake their Sins, and to lead a Religious Life: / Lest Death

Surprize them, and Repentance comes too late.” (1684-94) (click to enlarge)

Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century

http://hyperallergic.com/201120/broadsides-for-broadband-digitizing-the-peoples-literature-of-the-17th-century/[5/14/2015 12:02:13 PM]

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“The Dying Ladies last Farewell / To the WORLD: / Shewing the Vanity of things below and theExcellency of those above,” to the tune of “Sighs and Groans” (1672-96), Printed for P. Brooksby at

the Golden Ball in Pye-corner (click to enlarge)

“The Dying Ladies last Farewell / To the WORLD: / Shewing the Vanity of things below and theExcellency of those above” (detail), to the tune of “Sighs and Groans” (1672-96), Printed for P.

Brooksby at the Golden Ball in Pye-corner

View the English Broadside Ballad Archive online through the Department of English atthe University of California at Santa Barbara.

Tagged as: archives, Digitization, English Broadside Ballad Archive, Houghton Library, University of

California at Santa Barbara

Broadsides for Broadband: Digitizing the People’s Literature of the 17th Century

http://hyperallergic.com/201120/broadsides-for-broadband-digitizing-the-peoples-literature-of-the-17th-century/[5/14/2015 12:02:13 PM]

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