Popular Publishing in America

Broadsides

Broadsides are single-sheet publications, often issued as ephemera or announcements. The Harris Broadsides Collection is a comprehensive collection of American poetry published in broadside format from colonial times to the present. It off ers materials covering a broad spectrum of American life. Poetry of every description includes 18th and 19th century ephemeral verse describing newsworthy events, poetic effusions of sentimentality and patriotism, and contemporary limited editions, handsomely printed and illustrated.

In addition to the American poetry collections, the general Broadsides Collection includes a wealth of material on historical topics and general fine printing, posters, and bookplates. In the Rider Collection are broadsides dealing with Rhode Island history and culture; this collection includes are advertisements, programs, tickets, playbills, posters, labels, lottery tickets, and cartoons. A large segment pertains to the unsuccessful Dorr Rebellion of 1842. For more information, see : Broadsides; Harris Broadsides

Carriers Addresses:

Single-sheet poems published by newspapers and distributed by the carrier or newsboy on New Year's Day, a custom lasting from 1720 until the early 20th century. The poems, often anonymous, describe the events of the year, locally, regionally, and nationally, and request a gratuity for the faithful carrier. Illustrated with wood-engravings and decorative borders, they are unique historically and typographically. Carriers' Addresses issued as small pamphlets are al so included in the Harris Collection. Most of the Carriers' Addresse have been digitized and are available on the web. See also the web exhibition

Carriers Addresses in Nineteenth-Century America and the

Carriers Address Digital Collection, along with an

essay about carrier's addresses.

Children's Literature:

The largest concentration of children's literature in the John Hay is found in the Harris Collection. Particular emphasis is placed on editions of The Night Before Christmas, Mother Goose, and American Sunday-School Union publications.

Children's literature in the John Hay Library also includes The Dr. Arlene M. Pillar Collection of Children's Literature, which consists of approximately 3,500 titles, most of which were published during the late 1980's and early 1990's, the years during which Dr. Pillar was an Newbury and Caldecott Awards juror. The collection provides and excellent window on children's publishing for those years. Also in the John Hay Library is the

Lucy Truman Aldrich Collection of Rare Illustrated Children's Books : donated by her nephew, Mr. David Rockefeller. This is a collection of over 400 American, British, and French illustrated children's books dating from the 18th to the mid 20th centuries.

See the web exhibition

The Night Before Christmas:

Comic Books:

The largest comic book collection at the John Hay Library is the Michael A. Ciaraldi Collection. The majority of the collection consists of comic books published from the mid-1970s to the present day; there are also significant sections of magazine-format comics, graphic novels, fan and collector's journals, reissues of classic "golden age" comics and newspaper strips, translations of Japanese "manga" and "anime" comics and European comic art, and compilations of the work of comic artists, as well as advertising ephemera, role-playing game materials, and adult erotica. The Collection is particularly noteworthy for its holdings of comics by the small and independent publishers of the 1970s and 1980s. Imprints are very largely American, with some British satirical graphic magazines.

In addition, there is the Wayne Poulin collection, largely "superhero" comics from the 1970s and 1980s, and collections of the publications of 1990s publishers Valiant and Defiant.

Fine Printing:

Contemporary fine printing, artists books, books on hand made paper, and letterpress editions are a particular specialty of the Harris Collecion. Since the 1960s, a considerable amount of American poetry has been published by presses spec ializing in fine printing, and thus the Harris Collection has acquired a substantial portion of it.

Other collections in Special Collections at the John Hay Library that support the study of printing and the book arts are the Koopman Collection, the Dard Hunter Collection, the Rollo Silver Collection, the bequest of John D. Crawford, Jr., and the general Starred Books Collection.

For further information, see:

Harris Fine Printing

Genre Fiction:

Gift Books and Annuals:

These charming publications flourished in England and America from the 1820s through the 1850s, reaching their peak in the late 1840s and early 1850s. Uusally issued at Christmas and intended as a "Christmas, New-Year's and Birthday present", gi ft books were elegantly produced and included short stories, poems, essays, and were often illustrated with colored plates. Many of the best-known writers of the day contributed to them, and in their pages may be found first printings of the works of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and many others. The Harris Collection holds copies of approximately 94% of the gift books published in the United States. For more information, see

Harris Gift Books and Annuals

Sheet Music:

The Sheet Music Collection consists of approximately 500,000 pieces of music dating from the 18th through the 20th centuries. Owing to its size, the collection is divided into a number of sections. The largest is the section of vocal music, some 150,000 pieces, with an additional 35,000 pieces representing songs from the musical theatre, films, radio, and television shows. Afro-Americana accounts for perhaps 10,000 titles, of which perhaps 2,500 (mainly from the 19th century) are fully cataloged, and, of this number, ,1300 are digitized. There are another 2,000 pieces of cataloged music relating to World Wars I and II, and perhaps 1,500 cataloged musical settings of American poetry; there are another 1,500 uncataloged pieces belonging to these categories. Sheet music from the Confederacy is keyed to the citations in the Crandall bibliography; pre-1800 music is keyed to Sonneck-Upton, and music from 1801-1825 is filed by Wolfe number. Approximately one-third of the titles cited by Wolfe are in the Collection. There are also smaller (less than 2,500 pieces each) sections of: color lithographs; works by Boston lithographers; Endicott lithographs; Union imprint Civil War music; Latin American music; Yiddish-American music; Harrigan and Hart music; silent film music; dance folios; theatre music (non-vocal); music dealers' stamps; Canadian music.

See:

Afro-American Sheet Music From Brown University Library, 1850-1920

Small press publishing since 1960: periodicals and monographs:

One of the great strengths of the Harris Collection is in its collections of small press literature. Particularly since the 1960s, small presses and journals have proliferated. At any one time, Harris subscribes to several hundred current literary periodicals, mostly of very small print runs and distribution. The Collection also acquires comprehensively from vendors such as Small Press Distribution, and actively searches out other sources of independent publishing activity. The Library also holds the archives of a number ofsmall presses, both local and throughout the country, such as Copper Beech Press, Greenhouse Review Press, and December Press.

Songsters:

Songsters may be described as little books of lyrics (no notation) to popular and traditional songs. In America they were published from the 18th century through the end of the 19th century, with occasional appearances in the 20th century. Songsters are often associated with theatrical shows and performances, notably Harrigan and Hart, the Hutchinson Family singers, and many lesser-known variety performers of the second half of the 19th century; often there are cover portra its of the performers in costume. Songsters are also noteworthy as repositories of ethnic humor and jokes (and many are associated with 19th patriotic songs of all sorts.

Many songsters are associated with political campaigns; notable are those associated with the 1860 and 1864 Abraham Lincoln presidential elections. Patriotic songsters were very popular during times of war; the War of 1812 and the Civil War saw the publication of numerous songsters. In addition to songsters associated with the Union cause, there are more than a dozen very scarce

Confederate songsters in the Collection. For more information, see

Harris Songsters

Wit and Humor:

The largest collection of wit and humor is the Miller Collection. The Collection consists of ca. 30,000 volumes primarily of 20th-century American imprint, but including significant sections of 19th-century joke books, British imprints, works in European languages, and 19th-century editions of classic works of humor. The Collection includes works by Fred Allen, George Allen, Gracie Allen, Steve Allen, Woody Allen, Alan King, Allan Sherman, and H. Allen Smith. There is topical humor of every conceivable kind, such as sex, medicine, the law, sex, politics, sports, sex, and plumbing. There are also sections of comic novels, familiar essays by humorists, political satire, light verse, theatrical memoirs of comedy performers, American and European folk humor, ethnic humor, vaudeville routines, collections of political cartoons, paperback joke and cartoon books, and playscripts; and a notable section of "Army joke books", pulp periodicals from the World War II era. For further information, see

The Miller Collection.

In addition, the Harris Collection includes a collection of 19th century joke books, dialect poetry, and humorous poetry from every time period.