We have bought a Belfast-printed broadside (AP.el.214.02) entitled ‘A Scottish penny wedding’ dating from the 1840s. It contains a large wood engraving printed from nine individual blocks. The illustration shows a lively wedding scene in a barn with the bride and groom dancing to fiddle music and guests eating and drinking merrily. There were three […]
Tag: broadsides
A satire about a Prime Minister
We have bought an very unusual satirical broadside (AP.6.213.06): it attacks the unpopular Prime Minister John Stuart, third Earl of Bute (1713-1792). It’s written in the form of a letter from Beelzebub, or the Devil, to the Earl of Bute. At the top is a portrait of Lord Bute, which, unusually, is not a caricature but is a faithful representation of […]
Anti-slavery Campaign in Haddington
We recently bought an abolitionist broadside printed in Haddington, East Lothian, in 1814 – seven years after the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was passed. It is simply entitled Slave Trade. Beneath the title is a telling woodcut followed by an abolitionist poem: The inhabitants of Dunbar, a coastal town in East Lothian, had met in June 1814 […]