Question

broadside

Accepted Answer

a song or poem printed on one side of a large single sheet of paper offering for sale on the street by ballad seller and hawker from the Renaissance onwards.
generally doggerel verse or ballads to popular airs, broadsides enjoyed a great circulation in particular during the second part of the 17th when the production of street literature was at a peak

broadside (also known as a broadsheet) is a single sheet of inexpensive paper printed on one side, often with a ballad, rhyme, news and sometimes with woodcut illustrations. They were one of the most common forms of printed material between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, particularly in Britain, Ireland and North America and are often associated with one of the most important forms of traditional music from these countries, the ballad.

Development of broadsides

Ballads developed out of minstrelsy from the fourteenth and fifteenth century.These were narrative poems that had combined with French courtly romances and Germanic legends that were popular at the King’s court, as well as in the halls of lords of the realm. By the seventeenth century, minstrelsy had evolved into ballads whose authors wrote on a variety of topics. The authors could then have their ballads printed and distributed. Printers used a single piece of paper known as a broadside, hence the name broadside ballads. It was common for ballads to have crude woodcuts at the top of a broadside. Historians, Fumerton and Gerrini, show just how popular broadsides had been in early modern England. The ballads printed numbered in the millions. The ballads did not stay just in London but spread to the English countryside. Due to the printing press, publishing large amounts of broadsides became easier. Commoners were frequently exposed to ballads, in either song or print, as they were ubiquitous in London

Ballads Printed Broadsides Single Paper Popular Song Large