From Owdham Streets at Dinner Time to Victoria Bridge on a Saturday Night, Manchester comes alive through its broadside ballads.
This Wednesday, the Friends of the Manchester Centre for Regional History present A Brief History of Manchester’s Broadside Ballads in Prose and Song′ by Jennifer Reid.
The collections of broadsides in Chetham’s Library, Central Library and the Working Class Movement Library shed vivid detail on Victorian Manchester, specifically on themes of poverty, working conditions, machinery and the spending of free time.
As the ballads often have numerous verses, we will hear a handpicked selection of the most catchy and relevant ballads and postulate on their origins.
They were written by Grub Street hacks and are hardly worth the paper they were printed on, so why should we be interested? Academia has neglected them, George Formby has ruined them, our libraries have preserved them.
Wednesday 18th February 2015 at 6.30pm in Room 230, Geoffrey Manton Building,(Rosamond Street West, Off Oxford Road), Manchester Metropolitan University, Manchester, M15 6LL. All welcome.
