What's a Broadside?

Subject: What's a Broadside?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 09:21 AM

Wonder if anyone can help me. It has puzzled me for some time as to the meaning of the word 'broadside'. I know one meaning of the word- the broad side of a ship. But what about it's meaning when a song is referred to as being 'on a broadside?'

I am a relatively young Folkie I think and wonder whether or not this word has more meaning to older singers? Hope I hav'nt insulted anyone there. Sorry if I have.
Look forward to hearing your comments
Kipling

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: The Shambles
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 09:25 AM

http://www.contemplator.com/history/broadside.html

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: MMario
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 09:26 AM

in this case it refers to have been printed up as a songsheet; you will hear reference to "broadside ballads" and to "black-letter broadsides" - the latter having been printed n a distinctive type during one period.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Ed.
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 09:38 AM

There are over 30 000 of them to view at Bodleian Library Broadside Ballads

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 09:38 AM

Unless you want The Broadside,which was a very good group from Hull
in the good old days before they were assaulting equines

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Ed.
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 10:34 AM

There's a decent explanation at the Bodlean site that I mentioned above. Click here to read it.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Brían
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 11:09 AM

There was also a folk-revival publication by that name with the aim of proliferating folk songs in the same fashion-by hand and word of mouth instead of mass media. Many people became aware of Bob Dylan and Phil Ochs through this publication.

Brían

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: belfast
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 11:12 AM

And here's a piece of trivia. My mother once told me that when she was a child that if a singer forgot words someone would be sure to remark "He's got a hole in his ballad". The reference was to a broadside or songsheet bought at a market or fair. It would be folded twice and eventually wear and tear would make a hole in the middle of the sheet rendering the text unreadable. In Joyce's "Finnegans Wake", among the presents that HCE gives to Anna Livia Plurabelle is a hole in a ballad. This is my contribution to Joyce scholarship.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Brían
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 11:20 AM

One thing i don't see metioned in the rather good explanation Ed has linked us with is that the common form used for these is a four line stanza commonly called a come-all-ye because so many of these songs started that way. The singer was free to adapt the song to whatever melody that fit, and they often did. That is why so many of these songs seem to be sung to different melodies. The immigrant or the rural transplant would have many of these to chose from.

Brían

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 12:06 PM

Other broadside ballad links:

Broadside Ballad Index ["Contents Listing of Most 16th and 17th Century Broadside Ballad Collections, with a Few Ballads and Garlands of the 18th Century"]

Glasgow Broadside Ballads: The Murray Collection

Herbert Collmann's "Ballads and Broadsides chiefly Of the Elizabethan Period"

Curiosities of Street Literature, by Charles Hindley (London: Reeves and Turner, 1871) [electronic edition ]

Blackletter Ballads

Broadside Ballads [with links and resources]

Non-ballad broadsides (announcements, advertisements, notices, posters, etc.):

An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera

Exhibit of Broadsides
from Swem Library's Manuscript and Rare Book Collection (College of William and Mary)

NH Historical Society: Broadside Collection

~Masato

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 06:55 PM

I think Chris was asking; 'Why is the term "broadside" applied to these ballads?'
It would seem to be that ballads and other material were issued by printers on a single broadsheet, or broad side of paper, printed on one side only.
See Encyclopedia Britannica 1911 (Broadside) for more information.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 07:36 PM

Thanks to 'Guest' for raising the question. I think I have understood the concept by now, but it took several references in different discussions before I went to the required sites to check.
I feel the question, with a combination of Masato's and Ed's responses should now be moved to the FAQ

Nigel

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 10:11 PM

Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, volume 1 (Electronic Text Center, University of Virginia Library), especially "Chapter 11: THE STREET-SELLERS OF STATIONERY, LITERATURE, AND THE FINE ARTS." [an important documentary on the 19th-century broadside ballad and its sellers]

America Singing: Nineteenth-Century Song Sheets (Library of Congress American Memory) ["4291 song sheets"]

Confederate Broadsides -- Z. Smith Reynolds Library, Wake Forest University ["consists of over 250 examples of poems written by southerners and Confederate sympathizers during the Civil War"]

~Masato

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Sorcha
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 10:15 PM

And, because they were printed on only one side of a broad sheet of paper, and often quite topical with regard to current events, they were often nailed up to walls and posts.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: GUEST
Date: 20 Oct 02 - 10:27 PM

Nigel Parsons

You write in haste.

This is the sort of folk/music related discussion that should "hang" at the top of the discussion forum for 3 or more days. I'm sure we have not probed the depths of a possibly GREAT area of inquiry.

I saw "Broadsides" in the 60's that were part of the anti-war movement; they introduced me into the risque area of folk-song that was never mentioned by Carl Sandburg....ahhhh "Nancy Brown" - who was loved by all the people for miles and miles around.

Sincerely,

Gargoyle

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 21 Oct 02 - 06:59 AM

Garg: Point taken, even better, why not a "Newcomer's dictionary" where words we now take for granted are cross referenced with definitions, or URLs for threads such as this ?

Nigel

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: GUEST,Kipling
Date: 21 Oct 02 - 08:38 AM

Thankyou all for your valuable inputs. The variety of responses and infromation has certainly made me want to find out about this facinating subject and with the information gained now have a good start.

It is fascinating to me to hear about such a fascinating way of getting songs around, and meeting the demands of singers so long ago.
Great response and I certainly would agree that a newcomers dictionary would be a mosr useful link to have- even for use by those that are not such newcomers and are seeking confirmation of their own definition or wanting to challenge or add to existing ones.
Kipling

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: GUEST
Date: 21 Oct 02 - 08:40 AM

ooops sorry for the overuse of the word fascinating there. Did'nt realise intil I had hit 'submit' what I had done.
Kipling

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Noreen
Date: 21 Oct 02 - 09:47 AM

Leadfingers spoke hastily thus: The Broadside,which was a very good group from Hull

No, they were from Grimsby (a very important distinction!) and included John Connoly and Bill Meek, well known now for the songs they've written as well as for the Broadside.

Good question, Kipling old chap- how's it going out there?

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 21 Oct 02 - 10:46 AM

The Music of the Sixteenth Century Broadside Ballad by Greg Lindahl

Workhouse Literature: Broadside Ballads [with links to 15 broadsides in the Bodleian Library Collection]

Street Ballads of Victorian England [circa 1850-1870] [with a number of view images; Kent State University]

Texts from Collection of eighty street ballads on forty sheets by J. Catnach [University of Minnesota Libraries]

J. Pitts, Collection of ballads, songsheets [University of Minnesota Libraries]

Cavalier Songs & Ballads of England

BROADSIDE BALLADS IN AMERICA, article by Tom Faigin

Bawdy Broadsides

Broadside Ballads of William Palmer

~Masato

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Amos
Date: 21 Oct 02 - 11:08 AM

Kipling:

I like your handle, and would invite you to sign on as a member of our august community.

THis brings several advantages -- a continuity of friendships, the ability to exchange or ignore peronal messages with other members, and the chance to participate in all kinds of rumormongering under a stable handle. Try it!

A

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: GUEST,reggie miles
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 01:12 PM

I like that grass roots resurgence in the sixties that Brian mentioned, and didn't understand until reading this thread and following some of the links about the origins of the idea.

I guess the web and our various sites and pages might be our contemporary twist of those Broadsides. Except today we have the advantage of so much more technology at our fingertips and a much larger audience to reach because of those advances.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 09 Mar 04 - 02:10 PM

Then there is John Foreman, aka "The Broadside King" who used to put out new songs and old songs in this tradition back in the 60s and after - in between singing music hall songs and so forth.

And though he rarely appears these days, I see that on April 3rd he'll be guest for the night at The Cellar Upstairs Folk Club in London.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: GUEST,padgett
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 04:24 AM

from the gist of these replies i think the point has been missed
A Broadside in relation to sailing vessels related to the firing of the guns by each opposing ship, whether pirate V merchant ship or Spanish V English, a Salvo of balls, chain shot etc fired together for maximum devastation to rip away sails legs and everything else, no doubt returned by opponent!!
Broadside to Broadside on

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 12:06 PM

padgett, pacifists all here. Only know about the paper ones!

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Deckman
Date: 10 Mar 04 - 12:59 PM

I did miss your point, and my comment won't help ... I have a framed Broadside (the paper kind) hanging on my wall. It was printed in Dublin in the 16th centuary! Bob

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 08:14 PM

The Word on the Street (Broadsides at the National Library of Scotland), a great collection. See the threads: Tech: Broadsides from Scotland; and New site of broadside sheets (Glasgow).

Early Modern Center English Ballad Archive, 1500-1800 (now in progress) at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 09:19 PM

Kipling,

In addition to broadsides (sheets printed on one side only) ballads were issued in cheap print on broadsheets (printed on both sides), in small chapbooks called garlands and songsters, and on "slips" which were individual songs cut out of a larger broadside. Broadsides were also issued with other things besides songs: poems, news stories, artworks, etc.

Essentially, folklorists, looking for a classification for the ballads that came after the older, European stock (and after the Robin Hood ballads, Border ballads, and other materials collected by professor Child) began to call them "broadside ballads" because so many had been composed for publication on broadsides. The name is not strictly accurate, as there were these other forms of cheap print as well, and as not all songs so classified can be found on surviving broadsides. But it's the name that has stuck. G Malcolm Laws wrote that the ballads called broadside ballads "can either be traced to British broadsides or are clearly in the broadside style. Hence the term broadside balladry distinguishes this class of songs from the native American ballads and from those of Child."

If someone refers to the song itself as a "broadside" then that is shorthand; folklorists would say it is "broadside ballad" or "broadside song."

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 30 Jul 04 - 10:14 PM

Needed- A listing of native American broadside ballads and songs published by Andrews, De Masran, and others, beginning with the collection at American Memory. There seems to be no way to separate the broadsides from sheet and other published music.

Are the British Isles the home of the broadside ballad? I doubt it. The definition given by Nerd is provincial. Even the Chinese produced song sheets. What is their history in Europe?

Interesting products of the migration to the Gold Mountain (California) were the folk ballads printed in Chinese in San Francisco, telling of the Chinese experience in ballad form. I have not found that translations have been published, but I am sure that they would contribute to our knowledge of that time.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 01:43 AM

Q

What you say is quite true. I was not claiming the definition was or should be universal. I took the original GUEST's query to be about how the term broadside ballad is typically used, and this is certainly typical of how it used in both America and Britain.

As you say, in every European country plus all over America and parts of asia, broadside songs were produced (they were often called "flying leaves" in the various European languages.)

I don't know if a universal or non-provincial definition would be useful. English-language scholars typically use style as one of the ways in which they assign songs to the broadside category. Style does not translate well across languages, so there would be no way of stylistically saying "this French song and this English song are the same type of song."

So we could simply define as a broadside ballad: any narrative song in any language that was first published on a broadside. The problem then is the songs that are obviously the same style of song but of which no broadside survives. I just don't see that definition as being useful.

Then, too, defintions of folksong types have always been provincial, as the songs themselves so often were. The French "Complainte" is not the same as the English "Ballad," let alone "Child Ballad," which is not only provincial but downright idiosyncratic. The Spanish "Romance" overlaps these but is different, as is the Breton "Gwerz."

In Australia, they speak of "Bush Ballads," which are very similar to what we call native American Ballads here in the US; Mexican Corridos share themes with these and a similar relationship to their Spanish predecessors, but are distinctive. All of these have sometimes been printed on broadsides, but they are distinct classes of song.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: masato sakurai
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 04:12 AM

Flugblatt in German, canard in French, kawaraban in Japanese. If you're interested in Japanese kawaraban, click here at the University of Tokyo Museum site (all written in Japanese, though).

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 03:53 PM

Dutch broadsides about events in America and elsewhere were widely diseminated. One, late 18th c., about the 'bubble' (speculation) in Louisiana and the Duke of Orleans is reproduced in several American history books including those for children.
My problem with the English (I should say Laws) definition stems partly from the Dutch examples. The Laws definition was based on ignorance at the time about the worldwide practice of printing and distributing broadsides.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 05:23 PM

I disagree, Q.

Laws's definition was intended only to suit his material: he and Tris Coffin were conducting what he described as "a general survey of living American balladry," a series of books about English-Language ballads in American oral tradition. This series consisted of three books, Coffin's "The British Traditional Ballad in North America," Laws's "Native American Balladry," and Laws's "American Balladry from British Broadsides," which I was quoting above. Laws and Coffin thus categorized the English-language ballads in American Oral tradition as falling into three classes: "Child Ballads" or "British Traditional Ballads"; "British Broadside Ballads"; and "Native American Ballads." That was all they saw as their brief.

Laws was thus not proclaiming some overarching "defintition" of the broadside ballad throughout the world. Dutch and other broadsides were irrelevant to him. It's very unlikely Laws was unaware of broadsides in other languages, but I don't have time to scour his writings in search of such references.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 05:32 PM

Broadsides at American Memory:
An American Time Capsule: Three Centuries of Broadsides and Other Printed Ephemera. Broadsides.
Item one of 5000 in this list is a German broadside: "Christliches Alphabet," 20 verses. Undated.
Broadsides

American Memory definition of broadside:
Single-sheet notices or announcements printed on one or both sides, intended to be read unfolded.

Other American Memory Printed Ephemera definitions: Genre

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 05:39 PM

Evidently the address headings don't work. The heading for the whole is http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/rbpehtml/pehome.html

An American Time Capsule Does this work?

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 05:41 PM

Your links don't seem to work from here, Q. But in any case, the American Memory definitions of ephemera are not quite the ones generally used by people studying songs. Most of the AM categories are irrelevant to song studies as they were not used to disseminate songs. On the other hand, forms that WERE used for songs go unmentioned; they do not mention slips or garlands, for example.

They have also conflated "broadside" and "broadsheet" into one category (which is pretty reasonable).

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 31 Jul 04 - 05:42 PM

Oops, cross posted! I'll try the new link. Thanks, Q.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 01:35 AM

Nerd, I think you mean a handful of people using a definition not supported by major dictionaries such as the OED (even more limited than American Memory, it specifies "one side of paper only") and Webster's (a sheet printed on "one or both sides...").
I see no need, on the part of a student of song, for a term more limiting than- a sheet printed on one or both... containing a poem, a song or songs. Of course modifiers, such as 'blackletter,' are useful in defining a printing period or other feature that groups these ephemeral printings.
Bronson, in "The Ballad as Song," apparently makes no more of them than as a carrier of a poem or song.
The Bodleian Collection, of course, is a provincial collection, restricted to ballads in English; as the introduction states: "Broadside ballads were popular songs, sold for a penny or half-penny in the streets of towns and villages around Britain...." Of course these sheets in part were distributed around the English-speaking world, so their influence extends beyond "Britain."

I doubt that your definition has much currency in the United States. You also use the limiting term 'narrative,' which would eliminate part of the Bodleian Collection, Murray Collection, etc.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:38 PM

Q

When you say "I doubt that your definition has much currency in the United States," which one are you talking about? If you read my first post I defined broadsides as sheets printed on one side only. As you will see, this is identical to the definition in the OED which you somehow seem to think refutes what I have said.

There does seem to be a difference in the British and American usage of the term broadsheet. If you want both perspectives you can read, for example, Leslie Shepard's The Broadside Ballad, which on page 23 states:

A broadside is simply a sheet of paper with printing on one side. The term broadsheet has often been used instead of broadside, especially in relation to ballad broadsides. However, the modern trend in American bibliography assigns a special meaning. According to MacMurtrie (instructions for the descriptions of broadsides, American imprints inventory, 1939): "The broadsheet is a single piece of paper printed on both sides. Except for the fact that the text is carried overto a second page a broadsheet is similar to a broadside."

Your confusion also seems to stem from the fact that I am sometimes talking about broadside ballads rather than simply broadsides. This, for example, was the category which Laws was defining. "Narrative" is only used to distinguish broadside ballads from the great range of other materials published on broadsides. The other songs would be called "broadside songs" or simply "songs." As you may know, less classificatory work has been done on lyric songs than on ballads, so the terms are used in looser way. But you would not call a non-narrative song published on a broadside a "broadside ballad."

Now, to go onto the other things I have said about the "Broadside Ballad," I assure you it is typical in folklore studies in the United States to consider songs published in garlands and broadsheets, as well as those published on broadsides proper, in this category. My definitions of broadsides and broadside ballads, which you believe have no currency in the United States, were taught to me in the folklore department at the University of Pennsylvania by Kenneth S. Goldstein, who when alive was the foremost expert on broadside ballads and songs in this country.

Finally, when you say:

I see no need, on the part of a student of song, for a term more limiting than- a sheet printed on one or both... containing
a poem, a song or songs.

I would have to ask: what on earth are you talking about? When did I advance a more limiting definition than that for "broadside?"

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 03:43 PM

Oh, I think I see. The more limiting definition I proposed was that it was printed on one side only. True, this is not a particularly useful distinction for song scholars, which is why we call a song published on a broadsheet a "broadside ballad" too. That distinction is made primarily by libraries and collectors to describe the items physically.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Q (Frank Staplin)
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 06:19 PM

I think we are in part talking at cross purposes. To me, a ballad is simply a song, narrative or not. A broadside is a sheet of paper that bears printing. A ballad often is defined as a popular song, "especially a slow, romantic song," but I consider this just as limiting as some other definitions, such as a "narrative composition in rhythmic verse." There is tremendous overlap. I doubt we will reach agreement.

The one side-two side paper was never an issue; just wondered why the OED allows one side only to a broadside or a broadsheet while Webster's allows two sides. Americans more thrifty?.
Broadsheet, according to Webster's, is a British term for "a newspaper with full-size pages as distinguished from a tabloid," but also a synonym for broadside (OED as well). I have heard it used by printers here to refer to the large sheet of paper on which is printed the listing for a farm auction, an adv. for an entertainment, etc.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 01 Aug 04 - 07:00 PM

Q.

I think we agree on the following: in its most general sense a broadside is any single-sheet printed publication at all.

I further argue that in its more specific bibliographic sense, it is printed on one side only. This more specific sense, I believe, was the original meaning of the word.

The rest of our disagreement was about the classification of songs, not the meaning of "broadside" itself. I stand by everything I said in that area.

In particular, to folklorists, a ballad is a narrative folksong. Again, Leslie Shepard's book The Broadside Ballad is a good guide. Page 33: "It has been well said that a ballad is a song that tells a story." This is, to a certain extent, a technical term in folklore study. But it is very widely used, in Britain as well as the US, and in the folk revival as well as in scholarship. If you look, for example, at David Atkinson's recent scholarly book, or any of the folksong scholarship devoted to "ballads," or at folk albums that identify themselves as "ballads," they are almost always using this definition of a narrative folksong. (interesting exception: Pete Seeger, whose American Favorite Ballads albums featured all kinds of folksongs.) If you call any folksong at all a ballad, then you are the one using an unusual definition.

By the way, the dictionary is not always a useful guide. Within the folk music world, words often have specialized meanings, as in the case of "ballad." If someone were to ask "what's a come-all-ye," or "what's a play-party song," the OED would not help you. But someone who knows folk songs would be able to answer fairly quickly.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From:
Date: 02 Aug 04 - 07:08 PM

Re-Broadside the publication, co-founder Agnes "Sis" Cunningham died on June 29 at the ripe ould age of 95. RIP. Launched in 1962 from New York, with funds from Pete Seeger, Broadside published 1000+ songs;
many of these were issued on a Smithsonian Folkways 5 x CD set in 2000.
Enjoying the thread.

Stan (Lverpool Lullaby) Kelly
www.feniks.com/~skb/

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Stephen R.
Date: 03 Aug 04 - 12:18 PM

The broadside was a ubiquitous form of popular literature from the introduction of printing until the early 20th century. Printeries large and small issued them, and they contained all sorts of subject matter, not just songs: political diatribes, sensational news stories (they filled the role that we associate with tabloid newspapers, and the stories were often pure bovine excrement on broadsides too), religious tracts, etc. The songs were usually provided without melody, although for a brief period early on melodies were more common, and they might appear even in the 19th centuries, more often in songsters than on broadsides. While the folksong revival of yore emphasized the purely oral character of English-languane folksong and most of its founders disdained broadsides as thoroughly as did Frances Child (who famously referred to broadside song literature as 'a veritable dungheap'), nowadays it is generally recognized that the relation between oral tradition and broadsides (along with handwritten "ballets" and handwritten family songbooks) has been complex; songs were transmitted in both forms. Printers hired peddlars who could be found on city streets and at country fairs. Some of them sang the songs they peddled; otherwise it was up to the buyer to provide a suitable melody. Many or most oral-traditional songs also spread in part by means of the broadside. Many songs were composed by hack poetasters hired by broadside printers, and never achieved currency in oral tradition; some songs did spread from a broadside origin into the tradition, and printers also took songs from oral tradition for their broadsides. A pure oral-traditional song will often appear beside a music-hall song or a newly-written piece of doggeral (printers mixed things up like this so that a broadside would appeal to the widest possible range of potential buyers). The printers were totally unscrupulous about plagiarism, often colorful and raffish characters, and played a major role in the history of English-language folksong.

Now a question: along with broadsides, songsters, garlands, etc., I have found references to 'royals'; what are they, please?

Stephen

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Nerd
Date: 04 Aug 04 - 02:17 AM

If I'm not mistaken, royals were primarily visual art prints made from engravings; "copper royals" for copper engravings, which were finer, and "wood royals" for prints made from woodcuts. In the 1764 Catalogue from printers Dicey and Marshall, the copper royals are among the most expensive items. Like broadsides, these were usually sold one sheet at a time; but they were sometimes printed in series; D & M featured a series of the four evangelists, each on his own sheet.

Subject: RE: What's a Broadside?
From: Stephen R.
Date: 16 Aug 04 - 08:51 PM