BROADSIDE, or BROADSHEET. A va riety of pamphlet, consisting normally of a single large sheet, printed on one side only, and most frequently without division into columns. The broadside flourished chiefly in England, and was in use from the invention of printing for royal proclamations, Papal indulgences, and similar documents. It made a considerable figure throughout western Europe, about the middle of the Sixteenth Century, in times of political agi tation. In England it was very largely used for popular ballads, which were hawked about the streets. During the first ten years of Elizabeth's reign the names of no less than forty ballad printers appear in the Stationers' Registers; but comparatively few specimens have been preserved from the reigns of the Tudor sovereigns or of James I. The broadside, as representing an out burst of popular feeling, was more commonly en ployed during the Civil War, and seems to have reached its culminating point in the time of James 11. From that period, with the increase in the number of newspapers and the liberty of the press, it gradually died out, though still nu merous even under the Georges. The collection
of these sheets has always been a favorite pur suit among antiquarians, though never an popu lar as in recent years. Robert Burton, the au thor of the Anatomy of Melancholy, was one of the earliest collectors. John Seidel' made a con siderable collection of broadside ballads, which passed at his death to Pepys; the diarist had 1800 English ballads, which, bound in live folio volumes, are now in the library of Alagdalene College. Cambridge. One of the most famous col loci bats is that known by the name of the Duke of Roxburghe, now in the British Museum. gath ered chiefly by Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and including 2048 broadsides, hound in three volumes. In 1398 Lord Crawford had, at Haigh llall, Wigan, something like 19,000. For a mi nute and scholarly description of the English part of these, consult Bibliotheca Lindesiana (Aberdeen, 1898).