Early English Broadside Ballads (EBBA): Local and Global

FAIN: PW-269273-20

University of California, Santa Barbara (Santa Barbara, CA 93106-0001)
Patricia Fumerton (Project Director: July 2019 to present)

The continued development of the English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA), with the addition of 1,178 pre-1701 printed ballad sheets from 101 institutions in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. In addition, the applicant would catalog 923 tune titles and approximately 18,200 woodcut impressions and would enhance access to the entire ballad collection through the project’s new website, EBBA 4.0.

The University of California at Santa Barbara requests critical funding to launch the vital 8th and final stage of its digital English Broadside Ballad Archive (EBBA) to include the 1,178 extant but as-yet-unarchived pre-1701 English broadside ballads held at 101 institutions across the US, Canada, UK, and Australia. We have reviewed the largest collections on site at 15 institutions and have procured agreements from all to include their 850 items in EBBA. This signals great enthusiasm that we anticipate will extend to the remaining institutions with smaller holdings. Keeping to EBBA standards, we will provide high-quality facsimiles and transcriptions of the ballads, granular cataloging in TEI/XML/MARC (and now MEI), recordings, visual aids, and informative essays. Finally, we will launch our new website, EBBA 4.0, which will enhance user access to ballads as texts, music, and art.

Associated Products

• Moving Media, Tactical Publics: The English Broadside Ballad Archive in Early Modern England (Book)
Title: • Moving Media, Tactical Publics: The English Broadside Ballad Archive in Early Modern England
Author: Patricia Fumerton
Abstract: In its seventeenth-century heyday, the English broadside ballad was a single large sheet of paper printed on one side with multiple woodcut illustrations, a popular tune title, and a poem. Inexpensive, ubiquitous, and fugitive—individual elements migrated freely from one broadside to another—some 11,000 to 12,000 of these artifacts pre-1701 survive, though many others have undoubtedly been lost. Since 2003, Patricia Fumerton and a team of associates at the University of California, Santa Barbara have been finding, digitizing, cataloging, and recording these materials to create the English Broadside Ballad Archive. In this magisterial and long-awaited volume, Fumerton presents a rich display of the fruits of this work. She tracks the fragmentary assembling and disassembling of two unique extant editions of one broadside ballad and examines the loose network of seventeenth-century ballad collectors who archived what were essentially ephemeral productions. She pays particular attention to Samuel Pepys, who collected and bound into five volumes more than 1,800 ballads, and whose preoccupations with black-letter print, gender, and politics are reflected in and extend beyond his collecting practices. Offering an extensive and expansive reading of an extremely popular and sensational ballad that was printed at least 37 times before 1701, Fumerton highlights the ballad genre's ability to move audiences across time and space. In a concluding chapter, she looks to Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale to analyze the performative potential ballads have in comparison with staged drama. A broadside ballad cannot be "read" without reading it in relation to its images and its tune, Fumerton argues. To that end, The Broadside Ballad in Early Modern England features more than 80 illustrations and directs its readers to a specially constructed online archive where they can easily access 48 audio files of ballad music.
Year: 2021
Primary URL: https://www.upenn.edu/pennpress/book/16137.html
Access Model: Physical book
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Type: Single author monograph
ISBN: 9780812252316
Copy sent to NEH?: No

“Broadside Ballads and Rejigging Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale” (Conference Paper/Presentation)
Title: “Broadside Ballads and Rejigging Shakespeare’s Winter’s Tale”
Author: Patricia Fumerton
Abstract: A lecture presented by Patricia Fumerton at the 2021 Shakespeare Association of America.
Date: 4/17/2021
Conference Name: Shakespeare Association of America

“British Broadside Ballads" (Book Section)
Title: “British Broadside Ballads"
Author: Patricia Fumerton
Editor: Kirsteen MacKensie
Abstract: An invited book chapter.
Year: 2022
Publisher: Routledge Press
Book Title: Print Culture and Communication in the Stuart World

Some Uses of Print: An Ephemeral Bifocal Vision (Book)
Title: Some Uses of Print: An Ephemeral Bifocal Vision
Editor: Patricia Fumerton
Abstract: Project Director Patricia Fumerton is the editor for the forthcoming collection Some Uses of Print: An Ephemeral Bifocal Vision, contracted with the Strode Studies in Early Modern Literature and Culture, series ed. Michelle M. Dowd
Year: 2022
Publisher: University of Alabama Press
Type: Edited Volume
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Czech Broadside Ballads as Text, Art, Song in Popular Culture, c.1600–1900 (Book)
Title: Czech Broadside Ballads as Text, Art, Song in Popular Culture, c.1600–1900
Author: Patricia Fumerton
Author: Pavel Kosek
Author: Marie Hanzelková
Author: Ji.í Dufka
Author: Jakub Ivánek
Author: Jan Malura
Author: Michaela Soleiman pour Hashemi
Author: V.ra Frolcová
Author: Markéta Holubová
Author: Iva Byd.ovská
Author: Jitka Machová
Author: Hana Glombová
Author: Romana Machá.ková
Author: Hana Bo.ková
Author: Maciej M.trak
Author: Jana Poláková
Author: Kate.ina Smy.ková
Author: Tomá. Slavick
Author: Peter Ru..in
Author: Jana Pleskalová
Author: Olga Navrátilová
Author: Veronika Bromová
Author: Alena Andrlová Fidlerová
Author: Dmitrij Timofejev
Author: Piotr Grochowski
Author: Monika Szturcová
Author: Kate.ina B.ezinová
Editor: Patricia Fumerton
Editor: Pavel Kosek
Editor: Marie Hanzelková
Abstract: This landmark collection makes a major contribution to the burgeoning field of broadside ballad study by investigating the hitherto unexplored treasure-trove of over 100,000 Central/Eastern European broadside ballads of the Czech Republic, from the 16th to the 19th century. Viewing Czech broadside ballads from an interdisciplinary perspective, we see them as unique and regional cultural phenomena: from their production and collecting processes to their musicology, linguistics, preservation, and more. At the same time, as contributors note, when viewed within a larger perspective—extending one’s gaze to take in ballad production in bordering lands (such as Germany, Poland, and Slovakia) and as far Northwest as Britain to as far Southwest as Brazil—we discover an international phenomenon at work. Czech printed ballads, we see, participated in a thriving popular culture of broadside ballads that spoke through text, art, and song to varied interests of the masses, especially the poor, worldwide.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463721554/czech-broadside-ballads-as-text-art-song-in-popular-culture-c-16001900#toc
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Type: Edited Volume
ISBN: 9789463721554
Copy sent to NEH?: No

Introduction, “The History and Reception of Czech Broadside Ballads within Local, Regional, and Global Contexts" (Book Section)
Title: Introduction, “The History and Reception of Czech Broadside Ballads within Local, Regional, and Global Contexts"
Author: Patricia Fumerton
Editor: Marie Hanzelková
Editor: Patricia Fumerton
Editor: Pavel Kosek
Abstract: This landmark collection makes a major contribution to the burgeoning field of broadside ballad study by investigating the hitherto unexplored treasure-trove of over 100,000 Central/Eastern European broadside ballads of the Czech Republic, from the 16th to the 19th century. Viewing Czech broadside ballads from an interdisciplinary perspective, we see them as unique and regional cultural phenomena: from their production and collecting processes to their musicology, linguistics, preservation, and more. At the same time, as contributors note, when viewed within a larger perspective—extending one’s gaze to take in ballad production in bordering lands (such as Germany, Poland, and Slovakia) and as far Northwest as Britain to as far Southwest as Brazil—we discover an international phenomenon at work. Czech printed ballads, we see, participated in a thriving popular culture of broadside ballads that spoke through text, art, and song to varied interests of the masses, especially the poor, worldwide.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463721554/czech-broadside-ballads-as-text-art-song-in-popular-culture-c-16001900#toc
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Book Title: Czech Broadside Ballads as Multimedia Text, Art, Song, and Popular Culture, c. 1600-1900
ISBN: 9789463721554

“English ‘Heyday’ Broadside Ballads" (Book Section)
Title: “English ‘Heyday’ Broadside Ballads"
Author: Patricia Fumerton
Editor: Marie Hanzelková
Editor: Patricia Fumerton
Editor: Pavel Kosek
Abstract: This landmark collection makes a major contribution to the burgeoning field of broadside ballad study by investigating the hitherto unexplored treasure-trove of over 100,000 Central/Eastern European broadside ballads of the Czech Republic, from the 16th to the 19th century. Viewing Czech broadside ballads from an interdisciplinary perspective, we see them as unique and regional cultural phenomena: from their production and collecting processes to their musicology, linguistics, preservation, and more. At the same time, as contributors note, when viewed within a larger perspective—extending one’s gaze to take in ballad production in bordering lands (such as Germany, Poland, and Slovakia) and as far Northwest as Britain to as far Southwest as Brazil—we discover an international phenomenon at work. Czech printed ballads, we see, participated in a thriving popular culture of broadside ballads that spoke through text, art, and song to varied interests of the masses, especially the poor, worldwide.
Year: 2022
Primary URL: http://https://www.aup.nl/en/book/9789463721554/czech-broadside-ballads-as-text-art-song-in-popular-culture-c-16001900#toc
Primary URL Description: Publisher's website
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Book Title: Czech Broadside Ballads as Multimedia Text, Art, Song, and Popular Culture, c. 1600-1900
ISBN: 9789463721554

Tiny Treasures: Czech Broadside Ballads, Content, Forms and Interdisciplinary Research (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: Tiny Treasures: Czech Broadside Ballads, Content, Forms and Interdisciplinary Research
Author: Marie Hanzelková
Abstract: Marie Hanzelková is Assistant Professor in the Department of Czech Literature, Faculty of Arts, Masaryk University, Czech Republic. She has published several articles on Czech hymnbooks from the 16th century, and also on Czech broadside ballads (e. g., “Turning of Czech Pilgrimage Broadside Ballads,” 2021). Furthermore, she has collaborated on two exhibitions and catalogues. Together with Patricia Fumerton (UCSB) and her colleague Pavel Kosek (Masaryk University), she has most recently co-edited an enormous and expansive collection of essays (25 contributors, focused on Czech Broadside Ballads and their global relatives, reaching over 600 pages). This landmark edition is titled Czech Broadside Ballads as Text, Art, and Song in Popular Culture, c. 1600–1900.
Date Range: June 3, 2022
Location: UC Santa Barbara

“Inhabiting the Pepys Broadside Ballad Collection" (Conference/Institute/Seminar)
Title: “Inhabiting the Pepys Broadside Ballad Collection"
Author: Patricia Fumerton
Abstract: Patricia Fumerton was an Invited Lecturer, “Inhabiting the Pepys Broadside Ballad Collection,” for a symposium titled “The Ballads of the Pepys Library”: Friends of Pepys, June 16, 2022.
Date Range: June 16, 2022

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