Scope and Contents

Some 220 broadside ballads of the 19th century, from the library of W.A.S. Hewins.

For further details of this collection, and digitised images, please see the external documents section below.

Scope and Contents This collection was begun in 2013 by staff in Special Collections in consultation with colleagues from the School of English. Its purpose is to support teaching and research into the various ways in which poets and artists present and disseminate their work.It is a developing collection of mid-twentieth, and twenty-first century poetry broadsides from a range of British and American small press poetry publishers and printers. It so far includes examples from the Toothpaste Press,...

Scope and Contents The collection is in fact one item – a piece of linen twenty centimetres wide and, when unrolled to its full extent, nine metres long, on to which have been pasted fifty sheets, containing a total of 260 broadside ballads (including seven duplicates). These printed sheets carry song texts, some with tune titles and some decorated at the top with woodcut pictures. The choice of medium to carry these sheets is believed to derive from the fact that the Sykes family were cloth merchants....