The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London Oskar Cox Jensen

Now is a good time to examine the phenomena of broadside ballad performance, production, circulation, longevity, and significance, as attested by the recent books by Patricia Fumerton (The Broadside Ballad in Early Modern England: Moving Media, Tactical Publics (Philadelphia, 2020)), David Atkinson (The Ballad and its Pasts: Literary Histories and the Play of Memory (Cambridge and Rochester, NY, 2018)), and Jenni Hyde (Singing the News: Ballads in Mid-Tudor England (New York, 2018)). Broadsides speak from a vantage wider than merely that of people from the higher ranks (a limitation usual with other texts of corresponding periods), and today they are increasingly available in readable and well-represented online versions. Archived recordings of sung versions of ballads now also make possible a more complete study and appreciation of these multi-media forms, which circulated in the millions for hundreds of years. Highly popular and culturally relevant, some broadside ballads remained current in people’s sung traditions long after their earlier print forms and indeed the entire industry of broadside balladry ended. Oskar Cox Jensen’s The Ballad-Singer in Georgian and Victorian London makes a timely contribution to an increased interest in broadside ballads and their contexts, spurred by new avenues of digital access and investigation.