July, 2009

Taking Sides: The printed broadside from 1450 to 1830

Detail of a broadside from the Bodleian Library's "Broadside Ballads" archive

Not too far behind the St Bride Library’s Breathing Broadsheets exhibition, another broadside-centric event is being scheduled to take place in the UK this fall. The HoBo website — a “dedicated webspace for History of the Book events and resources throughout the UK” — has announced some preliminary information about another event scheduled for November 14, including a call for papers:

The Centre for the Study of the Book at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford is holding a symposium on the early-modern broadside in the age of its digital reproduction … This symposium will explore how the broadside demarcated or connected both public and private worlds and popular and learned cultures. What is recovered of the broadside and its world through digitization, and what remains to be reconstructed? What is its place in the histories of collecting, literacy, popular culture and antiquarianism?

Abstracts of 200 words describing papers of 25 minutes are invited on any aspect of the world of the broadside, from Gutenberg until the end of the handpress period (c.1830). Send abstracts by July 20 to giles.bergel@merton.ox.ac.uk

Conference organizers: Giles Bergel (Merton College); Alexandra Franklin (Centre for the Study of the Book, Bodleian Library)

While this is event is indeed close in topic, timing, and location to the St Bride exhibition, it clearly has a much more academic scope. Besides, as I always say: the more broadsides, the better.