Call for Papers: Broadside Day
Saturday 22 February 2025
Cecil Sharp House, 2 Regents Park Road, London NW1 7AY
Organised jointly by the Traditional Song Forum (https://tradsong.org) and the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library (https://www.efdss.org/vwml), the Broadside Day is an annual one-day conference for people interested in street literature in all its fascinating aspects – broadsides, chap books, songsters, woodcuts, engravings, last dying speeches, catchpennies, wonder-tales, almanacs, fortune tellers, and all kinds of cheap printed material sold to ordinary people in the city streets, at country fairs, and from pedlar’s packs up and down the country in past centuries. The day consists of short papers, presentations, displays, discussions, and is suitable for beginners and experts alike.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers or other presentations. Please submit a title, synopsis (300 words) and brief biography (100 words) by 1 December 2024, to [email protected] Remote presentations will be considered.
Suggestions for topics include (but are not restricted to):
-The subjects of the material (songs, stories and news items)
-Street literature collectors
-Authors
-Printers
-Street-sellers
-Printing technique
-The role that street literature played in spreading literacy, propaganda and dissent, and in keeping the poor entertained and informed.
For more information contact Steve Roud [email protected] or Tiffany Hore [email protected]
