English Civil War Broadsides (2018)

Creating English Civil War Broadsides, a pop-up exhibition at the Folger, took place on June 29th, 2018 from 2:30-4:15pm. It was curated by Brittney Washington, the 2017-2018 Nadia Sophie Seiler Cataloging Resident.

The pop-up exhibition took place following Brittney Washington's talk on her residency, during which she focused on cataloging items in the Wing collection. Her presentation, File:Cataloging English Civil Wars, Broadsides.pdf, examined the challenges and interesting questions generated by working with broadsides produced during the English Civil Wars (approximately 1642-1651), and making them more accessible to researchers through the application of expert description.

Brittney writes:

The resources in this collection are historically interesting for the perspective they provide on how the everyday person learned about current events and how the printed word was used to disseminate and control information flow. I am going to focus today specifically on broadsides, which is defined by the Art & Architectural Thesaurus as “a sizeable single-sheet notices or advertisements printed on one or both sides, often chiefly textual rather than pictorial, and printed to be read unfolded.” Broadsides were issued for a variety of reasons: to let the masses know of a change in the laws, or new orders or acts or decrees and also sometimes just as a way for the King to update the people on what he’s been up to. We are going to focus on the legal broadsides for this talk. Usually some kind of additional order for the sheriffs to post these in various places throughout the kingdom could be found on these broadsides as well. Challenges in cataloging these resources lies primarily in understanding the way laws were enacted traditionally, and how they were evolving in the time leading up to and during the English Civil Wars and there are also some physical descriptive elements that differ from a book or pamphlet that are brought out in the catalog record here. Going through this collection chronologically, as I have done (and heartily recommend to anyone else who may work on this project), highlights this change and provides the cataloger with insight and the ability to cross reference previously published related works more easily and track ongoing issues.