Broadside Day 2019

Saturday 23 February, 9:15am - 4:30pm

University of Strathclyde, Glasgow

The Broadside Day is our annual one-day conference covering street literature in all its fascinating aspects as sold to ordinary people in city streets, at country fairs, and from pedlar’s packs up and down the country in past centuries.

This year the conference is being hosted by the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow. Glasgow has a strong history of street literature publication, with the early printers concentrated in the Saltmarket area of the city. The production of chapbooks was a particular speciality. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the emphasis had shifted to broadsides, and the proprietors of the Poet’s Box, a local printing-shop, were issuing new song-sheets every week and were boasting of the hundreds of songs they held in stock.

The day will cover a range of topics, from songs of England’s Queen Elizabeth I to wood blocks used in Newcastle chapbooks collections, but will also feature a number of papers on Scottish ballads and writers:

Venue: Stenhouse Wing of the Stathclyde Business School, 199 Cathedral St, Glasgow G4 0QU

Organised by EFDSS and Traditional Song Forum, and supported by The University of Strathclyde.

Book now