johnjo entirely empathise with your perspective (certainly not digression!). We had a family friend (an 'uncle') who worked as a printer at the Western Morning News, I got to see the shopfloor and production when I was young and impressionable. It was a spectacle, still, in the 1970s, would love to see older printshops in full flow. Uncle Brian made me some metal type with my name on it. I used to colour it with diferent felt tip pens and print it all over on everything. Printing is a very sentimental art and industry : )
christian
- 8 Mar
- Joined Sep '17
Hello Blythwood Thank you very much for your posts here - it is super interesting to get detailed perspectives on printer's type design. We know Paul Barnes - part of the inspiration for Commercial Classics came from the playbills on this very project! We are hoping to arrange some events focusing on design at some point in the future. This 'W' is a beauty and one of the many points of value about the playbills collection at the British Library is that it has thrown up many surprises for type enthusiasts. One of the general trends is the surprising appearance and use of certain fonts outside of London in the regions much earlier than was previously thought current. Regional printing survives so much more precariously than London print and this category of print work exhibits such a great store of printer's kit and skills. Type specimens are rare - they were sadly neglected from the systematic collections of the British Museum Library and surviving copies that come up in the book trade attract high prices.
- In Typos?!
martinmaryska sorry for late reply: yes! that could make sense - good term!
"The proceeds of this Play will be appropriated to the relief and assistance of the distressed Highlanders and Poor now suffering in the Islands of Scotland"
John Herridge, one of our most prolific volunteers, has spotted an immensely interesting detail from a Jersey Island playbill dating from 1837; it is suffixed with this note at the foot of the bill.
Benefit performances are typically noted at the top of the bill and are usually associated with actors and other theatre workers (see the previous posts in this thread). We have spotted the occasional bill from the mid-19th century announcing charity performances for local hospitals or for orphaned children, but this fundraiser - for the people affected by the social and economic upheaval of the pernicious and the chronic effects of Highland clearances appears to be a very progressive and humanitarian gesture from the theatre. On first appearances it seems like a bold move - even though the Benefit announcement is 'relegated' to the foot of the bill instead of being given the usual puff in large sized bold type at the top of the bill. Was it controversial? Were the fundraisers hoping not to generate too much notice or controversy? The Arts have of course a long history of raising funds and awareness for social concerns and issues. Was this part of a wider network of events? Was it spontaneous or more solidly organised? This great spot from one of our project's volunteers provides historians with a very interesting detail for further investigation.'The London Stage Database, 1660-1800'
This new electronic resource may be of interest to volunteers interested in pre-1800 theatre and playbills. it is a searchable database of the monumental reference work 'The London Stage, 1660-1800'. Of course many plays performed in regional theatre had their debut in London, so the information and context can be cross-referenced and compared with performances outside of London.'The London Stage' information has been compiled from the playbills, newspapers and theatrical diaries of the period. Within the database, it is now possible to search all the performances of The London Stage between 1660-1800 using the title of the performance, names of performers, date ranges and theatres.
http://www.eighteenthcenturydrama.amdigital.co.uk/LondonStageThis is a subscription-based database and is available for readers with a British Library Reader Pass on Library networked PCs in the Reading Rooms. It is not freely available online https://www.bl.uk/help/digital-collections-access-restrictions - all the more reason to visit libraries (they are great places!!).
- In Typos?!
Volunteer, Rita Harris, had spotted another printer's error: 'Wedesday'
wedesday.jpeg
http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100022589078.0x000002#?cv=61
- In Typos?!
School of Reform; or, How to rule a Husdand' - printer's typo spotted by an anonymous volunteer
http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100022589132.0x000002#?cv=99husdand.jpeg
Hello saksupple
Thanks for setting up your site and for letting us know. Text-searching with OCR does provide some promising entry points for researchers and can provide encouragement to look closer at materials. I just always hope that people using full-text searches with early printed type do realise that the hit-rate will often be quite low and is certainly not comprehensive (this is very much the case for material like the database of 17th- and 18th-century Burney newspapers and even with the British Newpaper Archive. Still, it’s definitely of some use.Given my personal obsession with maritime history, I was very pleased to find an historical namesake, Mr Algar, selling tickets for a nautical drama in 1840 ...
https://twitter.com/cbarnacles/status/1041362011706322944?s=21I will refer to your site and search facility in some upcoming workshops on playbills. Really pleased the Library’s open data has inspired the work you have done!
Hello Frisby - thanks for raising queries about the locations of the playbills. It is a good question and I'm a little surprised that there haven't been more questions about it! One of the main reasons for launching this project is to capture more individual item-level details - information from each playbill sheet. The existing catalogue records describe what is held at volume or 'collection level' only - just one brief record covers a bunch of playbill sheets collated together into individual volumes. The British Library has acquired its great range of playbills from two sources: by purchase of individual sheets and collections of sheets from the book trade by past curators, and from donations or purchases of collections from known collectors, such as those collected by Sir Augustus Harris, manager at Covent Garden Theatre Royal Drury Lane; William Archer, the theatre critic; Sidney Carr Glynn; and William Barclay Squire. The main sequence of playbills (shelfmarked 'Playbills 1-482') comprise a range of periods, theatres and locations, some were already arranged by theatre or location but others - from miscellaneous locations and theatres - have been sorted into rough alphabetical groups in volumes. Researchers looking to use the playbills for their research have been supplied with a reference handlist which lists volumes by locations - this reference aid has generally only been available to readers in the Rare Books Reading Room (it hasn't been published). So, whilst we do have some form of guide for access to playbills by location it isn't exactly 'out there'. We think it would be great to have locations matched to individual playbills for the 'miscellaneous' regional volumes (there are about 40 venues in all), but the task would be best assisted with an automated list of known locations. I hope this is something that can be done in future. Meantime, I can email you a copy of the 'Register of Playbills' with locations / shelfmarks. Must be remembered that not all of the playbills volumes have been digitised, but it will help you find out what locations are covered in the collection.
So we know there are an estimated 240,000 playbills in the printed collections at the British Library - and 'In the Spotlight' participants have found that it's certainly not a straightforward matter to categorize what playbills are and what they advertise (see the discussion thread, "What Counts as a 'performance'" https://community.libcrowds.com/d/4-what-counts-as-a-performance/10) - are we talking about plays, songs, juggling, conjuring, fireworks, performing animals, ventriloquism, mime, dioramas, lectures etc etc?
But what about printed communications that have all the appearances of a 'straightforward' playbill but are actually imitations, replicas or satire? The visually striking design of playbills look to grab the attention of the passer-by - their primary purpose is to get noticed. They are really quite effective and it should perhaps come as no surprise that the form has been appropriated by others looking to grab attention for news, events and views.
There are some quite clever and utilitarian examples of historical printed sheets which advertise the stock and contents of shops, such as a grocer's or an ironmonger's; and there is also an entire genre of printed ephemeral sheets which can be referred to as 'Parody Playbills' - mock playbills that make political messages and provoke responses and even calls to action.
James Gregory, Associate Professor of Modern British History at the University of Plymouth, has written about this interesting genre in an article just published on the Electronic British Library Journal; 'Parody Playbills: The Politics of the Playbill in Britain in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries' can be read here http://www.bl.uk/eblj/2018articles/article6.html
The publication of this article has a nice association with our In the Spotlight project as James was part of the project's first workshop held last November at the University of Plymouth. It's great that the engagement and collaborative aspects of the project have helped stimulate interesting and scholarly work.
if you've been enjoying the playbills on In the Spotlight, you will love seeing examples of 'mock' parody playbills held in the British Library's collections as discussed in James's article.
Perhaps you might know of other examples of 'mock' playbills? Please do share them with everyone here ...
Great type for the play, 'Jack Sheppard' in the middle of the playbill! Printed in 1845 and looks like something from a 20th century Hollywood movie poster! The printer is "Williams, Printer, Portsea." (Portsmouth).
jack-sheppard.png
‘IRON Chest’ - not one of those immediately eye-catching ornamental fancy types; these classical letter forms are, I think, even more impressive. The hooked terminal of he ‘R’, the diagonal stem of the ‘N’ and the mix of upper and lower case for ‘Chest’ looks spectacular! Love it.
Playbills are very well-suited to the study of the development of typographical style - we can browse through examples of digitised playbills that effectively reflect the advances of printing through the Industrial Revolution.
We can see the way the space of the sheet is used and we can see the development of letter forms and the adoption of ornamental and fancy looking typeface.
Some expert eyes may even distinguish the specific origins of type used on the historical playbills: "The type is from the foundry of Joseph Fry, London" says one contributor of this Margate playbill from 1796 ..
vdc-1000225891570x000022.jpeg
It would be great to see Spotlighters posting images on here of examples of type in playbills which they think look interesting or remarkable. There are some wonderful examples, some beautiful, some odd-looking, some novel and even quite psychadelic looking letters! Copy them in here ...
alexmendes I couldn't see the full help text when using a mobile device and domestic network access . It does appear when using laptop and Library network. Strange.
dinascherbakova
Oh yes! Thanks for flagging that - it doesn’t seem to be displaying the full ‘help’ text with the guidance on ‘type what you see’. We’ll look into it and get it fixed. Are you using a mobile digital device or a PC / laptop? Might be missing from mobile display only. Thanks.- Edited
We’re so pleased you have asked this question! Early printing (prior to 1850) used several forms and styles of letters based in Roman Type which have been discarded by modern print.
Roman letters had no separate letters for V and U or for I and J and this can take us by surprise and cause confusion – we are used to seeing the full 26 letters of the English language alphabet in print. For example, look at the title page of this book printed in London in 1611, ‘FOVRE GODLIE AND FRVITVL SERMONS’. The author, ‘I. Dodd’ is actually John Dodd – an ‘I’ is used for the ‘J’.image.png
Dodd’s FRVITFVL sermon was delivered, ‘At a Faft’ – the ‘s’ of the word ‘Fast’ is represented by a letter-form which appears all over early printed texts’ it is called the ‘long s’ (in fact, when looking closely, it should be noted that the long s differs from an ‘f’ in that the horizontal cross stroke projects only to the left).
The long s has its roots in Roman (Latin) handwriting and was a style that crossed over from scribal production to printing. It can be found when a single ‘s’ is used in a word, or as the first ‘s’ in a double ‘ss’, like “sucefs”.
The long s was commonly used by all English printers up until the middle of the 18th century. After this it began a long period of being slowly discarded. John Bell’s edition of Shakespeare’s works in 1775 did not contain a single long s and that is quite indicative of a trend that the more professional printers and fine printed editions were doing away with the long s. It had pretty much entirely vanished by the middle of the 19th century.
Most of the playbills you see on ‘In the Spotlight’ date from the 1780s to the 1860s but there are plenty of examples of printing styles using the long s. Here’s a nice one used in the word ‘madness’image.png
There are a couple considerations for the persistence in their use, such as the economical use of the metal print type owned by printers - they wouldn’t be keen to jettison tools of the trade whilst they could still be made use of. Printers would not be averse to using type cleverly and economically (many examples can be found of the ‘double v’ for ‘w’) and it can be a joy to see them being used in innovative ways.
One of the major features of a printed playbill is its striking composition, its use of different type faces and letter forms. The printer’s skill can clearly be seen to develop rapidly from the late 18th century through the early 19th century as playbills become more and more eye-catching, after all that was their primary purpose. Aesthetically, a printer might still be inclined to make use of a good looking long s on his playbills.
We’re pleased you’ve asked this question because it has fundamental importance for the transcription tasks volunteers are undertaking on this project. We’ve included guidance in the ‘Help’ notes for the title transcription tasks asking that people ‘type what you see’ - however, we add:
“There is an exception to 'type what you see': if you come across a 'long f' - for example, the 'Sufpicious Hufband', please use 's' instead of 'f' in your transcription.”
“Type in the title exactly as displayed in the highlighted box on the page.”
Of course, it’s always possible that there are typos https://community.libcrowds.com/d/8-typos If you think there’s a typo – please transcribe it with the typo intact – “type what you see”. But if it’s a long s you see, please do just type it as a straightforward modern s.
Thanks so much for participating – and especially for raising this question.Birmingham, 1815, 'BENEFIT OF THE GENERAL HOSPITAL'
200 years later and many a general hospital now could do with the proceeds to fund the care of the nation.image.png
- Edited
http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100022589044.0x000002#?cv=17
Like the playbill's compositor has emphasized, this particular entertainment of Tom and Jerry: or Life in London, staged in Bristol in 1822 is really quite NEAT. This playbill is a great example of how the notices began to feature descriptions of the theatre sets, doing justice to all the work and effort put into creating spectacular environments for the plays. It's a nice little detail here that one of the sets being described is a famous venue for entertainment itself - The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens.
What is the most unusual or impressive set you have seen described on playbills on In the Spotlight?
'The Monkey Who Had Seen the World' a song by Miss Rosalie Corri, performed in 1821.
http://access.bl.uk/item/viewer/ark:/81055/vdc_100022589060.0x000002#?cv=2
So many song titles on these playbills that leave you wanting to see the lyrics! After a cursory search it might be that there is no printed edition of the song. Rosalie, a songstress of Neapolitan descent. lived in Edinburgh and was the niece of Mr D. Corri who was a composer. Perhaps the Monkey song might be in a collection of Airs ...?At any rate, I now want to release a hit album called, 'The Monkey who had seen the World'!