Enfilade

Taking Sides: The Printed Broadside 1450-1830
Merton College (Mure Room), University of Oxford, Saturday, 14 November 2009

In association with Merton College, 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. Printed for display purposes (typically on one side of a single sheet), the broadside arguably addressed a wider audience than any other publication of the handpress period. Broadsides were advertisements, religious indulgences, political addresses, civic discourses, teaching aids, ballads and other forms of entertainment. 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 histories of collecting, literacy, popular culture and antiquarianism?

• Falk Eisermann (Berlin State Library), “Medium of the Masses? Some Observations on Press Runs and Audiences of 15th-Century Broadsides”
• Susanna Berger (University of Cambridge), “Pedagogical Broadsides and the Study of Aristotelian Logic”
• Richard Sharpe (University of Oxford), “The Vending of Books: Sheldonian Sales-catalogues 1694 to 1720”
• Angela McShane (Victoria and Albert Museum/Royal College of Art), “Cultural Economics in the Broadside Trade: ‘Commissioned’ and ‘Retail’ Broadsides”
• Eric Nebeker (University of California, Santa Barbara), “Musical Broadsides and Their Audiences in the Seventeenth Century”
• Sara Mori (Gabinetto Vieusseux, Florence), “Between Censorship and Permission: Tuscan Broadsides at the Beginning of the 19th Century”
• E. Wyn James (Cardiff University), “Illustrating Welsh Broadsides”
• John Bidwell (Morgan Library and Museum), “Broadside Editions of the Declaration of Independence”

Supported by Merton College, All Souls College, Bodleian Library Centre for the Study of the Book and The Bibliographical Society. Graduate student travel bursaries are available, generously funded by The Bibliographical Society. E-mail for information: giles.bergel@merton.ox.ac.uk / alexandra.franklin@bodley.ox.ac.uk

Dr. Giles Bergel
JPR Lyell Research Fellow in the History of the Book
Merton College, University of Oxford