Description: Before newspapers, the broadside spoke. In taverns, meeting houses, and doorways, a single sheet could carry news, satire, sorrow, and song across a growing colony. Listen to the street press. Worthington Chauncey Ford gathers that fleeting world into a rigorous bibliographic catalog of Massachusetts printing from 1639 to 1800, tracing the rise of Massachusetts broadside literature from the New England 17th century through the early Republic. Part broadside ballads anthology, part historical ephemera collection, it maps early American ballads and proclamations alongside the local notices, elegies, hymns, and political broadsides that shaped public life in colonial Massachusetts 1639-1800. Compiled for the American Antiquarian Society, this library reference bibliography illuminates colonial printing history with calm authority, guiding readers through printers, imprints, dates, formats, and surviving locations. For researchers in genealogy and local history, it helps place names and events on the page; for collectors and classic-literature enthusiasts, it offers a trustworthy roadmap to early American imprints and the material culture of a province finding its voice. Republished by Alpha Editions in a careful modern edition, this volume preserves the spirit of the original while making it effortless to enjoy today -- a heritage title prepared for readers and collectors alike. Read it straight through or dip in at random: a funeral verse here, a sea-song there, a proclamation, a joke. Each entry marks what once fluttered on walls and in pockets, and what still matters. A quietly thrilling companion for Americana shelves and serious cataloguing alike, for libraries and private collections.
