Copy of article originally published in: Hinks, J., and Armstrong, A. (eds), 2008. Book trade connections from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries. London : British Library.

It has long been a truism for historians and literary scholars that, as Tessa Watt expressed it, 'the printed broadside was the cheapest and most accessible form of print'. In the case of political broadside ballads, however, the issue of accessibility is a good deal more complex than this simplistic connection with price suggests. Though certainly cheap, indeed sometimes free, much political ballad debate was not accessible to the less informed, traditional ballad consumers, and, in further contradiction of orthodox scholarly opinion, probably intentionally so. This essay argues that typography, format and content are the key criteria by which accessibility must be judged. A close analysis of the material nature and content of political broadside ballads, within the context of the whole genre and its market, reveals a spectrum of ballad products ranging from 'popular' to 'elite', or, since these terms have limited usefulness, from more to less accessible. By way of an extended case study, we shall see that political ballad broadsides were consciously and carefully adapted for different kinds of consumers.

Offprint from: Book trade connections from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries / edited by John Hinks and Catherine Armstrong.