Cambridge Broadsides

The piece, being universally approved, was … reprinted in Britain on a broadside, to be stuck up in houses" Benjamin Franklin, Autobiography (1771-1789)

In printing, a broadside is a single-sheet publication printed on one side only, and designed to be handed out in the street or perhaps pasted to a door or wall. Their history goes back to the earliest days of printing; one survives advertising a publication by William Caxton, and they continued to be produced in great numbers into the nineteenth century. Broadsides were produced to serve many different purposes; they could be administrative documents such as indulgences or notices, wallcharts and aides-memoire, keepsakes for a special occasion, sources of information on current affairs, political satires or, in the case of broadside ballads, means of popular entertainment. Because of their ephemeral nature, surviving broadsides probably represent a very small proportion of the number produced. This collection showcases some of the rare and unique broadsides in the holdings of Cambridge University Library, focusing initially on material connected with Cambridge (both town and university) and its surroundings.