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CFP: The Broadside Day

The Broadside Day is the annual one-day conference for people interested in Street Literature and Cheap Print in all its fascinating aspects - broadsides, chapbooks, songsters, woodcuts, engravings, last dying speeches, catchpennies, news (real and fake), almanacs, carol sheets, wonder tales, and all kinds of cheap printed ephemera sold or distributed to ordinary people in the streets and at fairs, from pedlars’ packs, and in back-street shops, up and down the country.

Organised jointly by the Vaughan Williams Memorial Library and the Traditional Song Forum, next year’s Day will be an in-person event (with live online streaming) on Saturday 12th February, at the Centre for Printing History and Culture, at the University of Birmingham.

Papers of 20 minutes length are invited on any aspect of our broad subject, including the content, the technology, the artifacts, the trade, the sellers, the audience, the illustrations, or on any other features of this diverse field. We hope to be able to accommodate remote presentations from those who cannot get to Birmingham.

Please send a proposal of not more than 250 words to Steve Roud (steveroud@gmail.com) by Friday 19th November 2021; indicating also whether you hope to be there in person or can only offer a remote presentation.

As with previous conferences, we plan to make selected papers available in the Street Literature series published by The Ballad Partners (theballadpartners.co.uk) in due course.
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