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This chapter describes broadside literature, which emerged in early modern England. The principal functions of most broadside literature was to instruct, exhort, entertain, and, perhaps above all, to persuade an audience. Broadside literature brought people together into public spaces to share information or entertainment, thus provoking public debate and at the same time creating a truly public record that could be stored and revisited. This enabled people to build up a critical understanding of social, political, legal, and religious structures and principles, and provided literary examples and vehicles for expression that could be appropriated by those without authority or cultural capital. Broadsides can be roughly divided into two broad but overlapping categories. In the first category are items that were commissioned by interested parties for official, legal, or personal purposes such as indulgences, proclamations, declarations and instructions, and epitaphs. In the second category are speculative products that were intended for the general retail market, such as single-sheet “ABC” or hornbooks sheet-almanacs, ballads, tables and charts, poems, prologues, advertisements, pictorial broadsides, and other decorative items.
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