Cheap Print and Street Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century - cover image

Copyright

David Atkinson; Steve Roud;

Published On

2023-09-04

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80511-039-2
Hardback978-1-80511-040-8
PDF978-1-80511-041-5
HTML978-1-80511-045-3
XML978-1-80511-044-6
EPUB978-1-80511-042-2

Language

  • English

Print Length

396 pages (viii+388)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 28 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.1" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 30 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.18" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback761g (26.84oz)
Hardback926g (32.66oz)

Media

Illustrations32

OCLC Number

1399167380

LCCN

2022361431

THEMA

  • AFH
  • AGA
  • WCS
  • NHTB

BIC

  • AFH
  • HBLL
  • JFCA
  • JFCD
  • KNTP
  • JHMC
  • 1DBK

BISAC

  • ART048000
  • ART023000
  • ANT005000
  • HIS054000

LCC

  • PR448.P64

Keywords

  • Eighteenth-century trade
  • Street literature
  • Ballads
  • Chapbooks
  • Popular prints
  • Printers
  • Book trade

Cheap Print and Street Literature of the Long Eighteenth Century

  • David Atkinson (editor)
  • Steve Roud (editor)
This deeply researched collection offers a comprehensive introduction to the eighteenth-century trade in street literature – ballads, chapbooks, and popular prints – in England and Scotland. Offering detailed studies of a selection of the printers, types of publication, and places of publication that constituted the cheap and popular print trade during the period, these essays delve into ballads, slip songs, story books, pictures, and more to push back against neat divisions between low and high culture, or popular and high literature.

The breadth and depth of the contributions give a much fuller and more nuanced picture of what was being widely published and read during this period than has previously been available. It will be of great value to scholars and students of eighteenth-century popular culture and literature, print history and the book trade, ballad and folk studies, children’s literature, and social history.

Endorsements

This is clearly an excellent collection of essays written by many of the best scholars in this field. The contributions are very well balanced in covering the different parts of Britain and encompassing a wide range of themes. The editors are a fine team with a superb track record, and each one of the authors is a foremost expert in their particular area.

Adam Fox

Professor of Social History, University of Edinburgh

Reviews

In ten chapters, bookended by the editors’ introduction, a fascinating overview of the areas that have engaged scholars to date, and Atkinson’s afterword, summarizing the themes encompassed and outlining areas for future scholarship, we enjoy a fuller picture of what was printed and read in the long eighteenth century than has been previously published. [...] Taken together, these essays illuminate local print history and characters along with offering broader vistas, especially of the Scottish trade. They treat of both continuity and development, a dichotomy that Atkinson in his afterword contends is ‘at the heart of the eighteenth century, and could usefully remain at the heart of future research into the cheap print trade’. The achievement of the book is in setting this ‘heart’ beating to provide the lifeblood to new scholarship. Its availability on open access will provide both researchers and enthusiasts with stimulating fare.

Catherine Ann Cullen

Folk Music Journal, 2024.

Contributors

David Atkinson

(editor)
Honorary Research Fellow at the Elphinstone Institute at University of Aberdeen

David Atkinson is the author of The English Traditional Ballad (2002), The Anglo-Scottish Ballad and its Imaginary Contexts (2014), and The Ballad and its Pasts: Literary Histories and the Play of Memory (2018). With Steve Roud he has co-edited Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America (2014), Street Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century (2017), Cheap Print and the People: European Perspectives on Popular Literature (2019), Street Literature and the Circulation of Songs (2019), and Printers, Pedlars, Sailors, Nuns: Aspects of Street Literature (2020). He has published articles on cheap print in The Library, Publishing History, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, and the Journal of the Edinburgh Bibliographical Society. He is the editor of Folk Music Journal, Honorary Research Fellow at the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen, and Executive Secretary of the Kommission für Volksdichtung (Ballad Commission).

Steve Roud

(editor)

Steve Roud is a retired Local Studies librarian and now a freelance writer, researcher, and indexer specializing in the history of traditional song and street literature. He is the compiler of the online Folk Song Index and Broadside Index databases, and his Folk Song in England was published by Faber in 2017. Most recently, he has co-edited The Routledge Companion to English Folk Performance (2021). With David Atkinson he has co-edited Street Ballads in Nineteenth-Century Britain, Ireland, and North America (2014), Street Literature of the Long Nineteenth Century (2017), Cheap Print and the People: European Perspectives on Popular Literature (2019), Street Literature and the Circulation of Songs (2019), and Printers, Pedlars, Sailors, Nuns: Aspects of Street Literature (2020).