Broadsides

Broadsides were single sheets of cheap paper, printed on one side with rough type, crude woodcuts, and simple texts. Dating from the early sixteenth century, the broadside trade decreased in the eighteenth century but increased in the early nineteenth century as a result of the improved productivity of new iron‐frame presses and the centralized markets of urban economies. Victorian broadsides engaged an extensive range of popular and political, historical, and mundane topics. The most profitable genre of Victorian broadsides was the execution ballad, but comic and romantic ballads were also popular. Their central role in the marketplace of print and their explicit engagements with working‐class politics reflect the class identities and multiple literacies of Victorian Britain. The broadside's late‐Victorian decline was precipitated by the removal of stamp and paper duties, which enabled working‐class consumption of penny dailies and other cheap print.