A Broadside series

Issues from the first volume of the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts's set of the A Broadside series.

A Broadside was a periodical, published monthly by Elizabeth Corbet (E.C.) Yeats Elizabeth Corbet (E.C.) Yeats at the Cuala Press in Dublin, Ireland, from June 1908 to May 1915. There are seven volumes of this set of A Broadside, each starting in June and ending in May of the year after. The Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books, and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania holds two volumes in full, the first year from June 1908 to May 1909 and the second year from June 1909 to May 1910, and various issues from the ensuing volumes until May 1915, the last issue of the set. The series includes poems by James Stephens, Lady Gregory, Seamus O'Sullivan, William Butler (W.B.) Yeats, and others, and translations into English from George Borrow, Lady Gregory, Douglas Hyde, and others. Jack Butler (Jack B.) Yeats, the brother of E.C. and W.B. Yeats, illustrated the series. Each edition of A Broadside had 300 copies.

Background

Irish Revolutionary Period

Although England first invaded Ireland over eight centuries ago, the country's history as fully part of the English, later British, Empire began in 1601 when Gaelic Ireland was defeated at the siege of Kinsale. For over 300 years, Ireland would remain a part of the British Empire.

The Irish revolutionary period was between the introduction of the Third Home Rule Bill in 1912 and the end of the Irish Civil War in 1923. The Home Rule Act, which was passed by the UK Parliament in 1914, was suspended for the duration of the First World War with many Irish men joining the British war effort in an attempt to secure it; however, Home Rule never came to fruition. The Easter Rising, an insurrection by 1,200 Irish Republican soldiers who proclaimed a new Irish Republic, in Dublin in 1916 marked the first armed conflict of the period. Although the Irish Republican soldiers lost, the high death count, high number of arrests, and public execution of 15 Irishmen gained significant support for the Republican cause in Ireland, creating martyrs. In January 1919, Dáil Éireann, a breakaway government, declared independence, claiming jurisdiction over the whole of Ireland and waging a guerilla war. The island was partitioned in May 1921 into what is today the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland opted out of the Irish Free State when it was established under the Anglo-Irish Treaty in December 1922. This led to the Irish Civil War, which, although short, has left Irish society divided for over a century.

The statutory role of the British monarchy in this territory did not end until 1948 when it was declared the Republic of Ireland.

Irish Literary Revival

From the late 19th to early 20th century, Dublin, where A Broadside was published, was the center of the Irish Literary Revival, a part of the larger Celtic Twilight named after a book of the same name by W.B. Yeats. The movement was aligned with strong political nationalism and a revival of interest in Ireland’s Gaelic literary heritage during a time of growing political turmoil. Although the Irish Literary Revival used English to revitalize Irish literature and was thus nicknamed the Anglo-Irish Literary Revival by some, it was inspired by the Gaelic Revival, a national revival of interest in the Irish language and Irish Gaelic culture including folklore, mythology, music, etc. in the late 19th century, although there was tension between the two movements over whether to use the Irish or English language to craft an Irish literature and the Anglo-Irish Protestant social class of the Irish Literary Revival's leading members. Members of the revival included W.B. Yeats, who was the movement's foremost figure, Lady Gregory, George Russell, Douglas Hyde, James Stephens, and Standish O'Grady, many of who contributed poems to A Broadside.

Yeats Family

The Yeats family, who moved between Dublin, Sligo, and London in the late nineteenth century, was extraordinarily artistic. Born to renowned Irish portraitist John Butler Yeats and Susan Pollexfen, the Yeats siblings, excluding Robert Corbet Yeats and Jane Grace Yeats who died as young children, W.B. Yeats, E.C. Yeats, Lily Yeats, and Jack B. Yeats, undertook a variety of artistic pursuits for which they received acclaim: W.B. as a celebrated poet and playwright, E.C. and Lily as craftworkers and printers, and Jack as an esteemed painter. W.B., E.C., and Jack had explicit roles in creating A Broadside: E.C. printed A Broadside, W.B. and Jack contributed poems, and Jack illustrated the periodical. Each of the Yeats siblings was inspired by Irish mythology,folklore, and history, which appeared in their work. Lily contributed to the design of the work according to Villanova University, although her name does not appear in A Broadside.

E.C. Yeats

Elizabeth Corbet “Lolly” Yeats, printed "E.C. Yeats" in A Broadside, was an Irish publisher and one of the foremost figures of the Irish Arts & Crafts movement, which hoped to stimulate the production of art in and Ireland in the late 19th and early 20th century. She attended the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art before she moved to London in 1886 and attended the Chiswick School of Art in London. She became an art teacher and published author. Before she returned to Dublin in 1900, Yeats trained at the Women's Printing Society in London under the suggestion of Emery Walker, whom she met through William Morris, who played a key role in reviving traditional British textile arts. In 1902, Yeats, her sister, embroiderer Susan Mary "Lily" Yeats, and her friend, Evelyn Gleeson, founded Dun Emer, an Irish Arts and Crafts textile studio. They established the Dun Emer Press, which Yeats managed. The press, located in Gleeson's house in Dundrum, was set up to train young women in bookbinding and printing. Yeats printed her brother's In the Seven Woods: being poems of the Irish heroic age.

1887 portrait of E.C. Yeats by Jack B. Yeats.

Yeats grew to dislike Gleeson and ended their professional relationship in 1908, rebranding the Dun Emer Press to the Cuala Press with W.B. and Lily. There, she printed over 30 books of Irish poetry and prose, as well as A Broadside. Yeats was the first commercial printer in Ireland to work exclusively with hand presses.

Jack B. Yeats

Jack Butler (Jack B.) Yeats (August 29, 1871 – March 28, 1957) was an Irish artist. At 18, Yeats, who spent his childhood in Sligo with his maternal grandparents, returned to his family in London to attend art school. He began his artistic career as a black-and-white journalistic illustrator for various publications in London such as Punch and as a designer for Allen and Sons in Manchester in the 1890s . In 1897, he began to work in watercolor and hosted his first exhibition of watercolors in London in 1897. When Yeats permanently moved to Ireland in 1910, he began to work in oil paint. The National Gallery of Ireland describes Yeats's early paintings as a "realist approach of his graphic work" concentrating on scenes of rural and urban life. At the same time, he began to work with his sisters' Cuala Press, illustrating for A Broadside. Yeats also contributed poems to A Broadside under the names Wolfe Tone McGowan and Robert Emmet McGowan.

Throughout his childhood, Yeats traveled the Irish countryside with his grandfather, William Pollexfen, a well-known shipbuilder and merchant. They attended horse races and fairs. These became reoccurring motifs in Yeats's work. Yeats relied on memory and retrospection throughout his career, particularly on his memories of his childhood in Sligo, and stated that he rarely painted a painting "without a bit of Sligo in it." In A Broadside, Yeats used motifs that were common in his illustrative work: pirates (a love that can be attributed to his shipbuilder grandfather), circuses, traveling, horses, and country life events. Thomas MacGreevy, a long-time acquaintance of Yeats and a pallbearer at his funeral, believes Yeats's work was a "consummate expression of the spirit of his own nation" during Ireland's struggle for independence, although he is generally presented as an apolitical artist. For example, Bachelor's Walk, In Memory (1915) commemorated the lives of four civilians shot by British forces in July 1914. Other works such as The Funeral of Harry Boland (1922) and Communicating With Prisoners (1924) communicate the political tension of the time. Playwright Samuel Beckett called Yeats "very Republican."

Jack B. Yeats in 1904.

W.B. Yeats

William Butler (W.B.) Yeats (June 13, 1865 – January 28, 1939) was an Irish poet, playwright, and politician known as one of the foremost English-language writers of the 20th century and the driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival in the late 19th century to early 20th century. Although the Yeats family was part of the Protestant, Anglo-Irish minority of Ireland and lived in London for fourteen years of his childhood, Yeats resolutely affirmed his Irish nationality and wanted to create a uniquely Irish literature based on Irish history and mythology through English. He earned the 1923 Nobel Prize in Literature for "his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation," and was described by the Nobel committee as "the interpreter of his country." Yeats staunchly followed traditional verse forms, and he used symbols from ordinary life and familiar traditions. Over time, Yeats, who used a heavily elaborated style in his early writing, began to use conversational rhythms and simpler diction, which disappointed readers.

Yeats was the driving force behind the Irish Literary Revival, traveling between its two geographical centers, London and Dublin, to write. Although inspired by Irish mythology and folklore, Yeats never learned Irish and was assisted by Douglas Hyde, who published a collection of Irish folklore in Irish in 1890. In 1904, Yeats founded the Irish Literary Theatre, later the Abbey Theatre, with Lady Gregory, the mission of which was to perform only modern plays written by Irish authors or those that dealt with Irish topics. During the Irish revolutionary period, Yeats's poetry, which began to take inspiration from T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound, increasingly reflected his political pessimism about the state of the country, even after Irish independence was declared. In 1922, Yeats was appointed a senator of the Irish Free State, and he became increasingly fascinated by European fascist movements. Yeats contributed poems to A Broadside between 1908 and 1915.

W.B. Yeats photographed in 1903 by Alice Boughton.

Cuala Press

The Cuala Press was a private press in Churchtown, County Dublin, Ireland founded by E.C. Yeats, Lily Yeats, and W.B. Yeats in 1908. E.C. managed book publishing while Lily oversaw the design, embroidery of linen, and tapestry and carpet weaving. The press published over 70 titles from 1908 to 1946, many associated with the Irish Literary Revival, and it played a pivotal role in publicizing the authors of this movement: W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, J.M. Synge, Douglas Hyde, and others. Additionally, the press also printed ephemeral material such as Christmas cards and literary broadsides, mainly illustrated by Jack B. Yeats. The press was largely operated by women, intended to provide them with employment and vocational training.

The press, for the most part, ceased operations in 1946. However, Georgie Hyde-Lee Yeats, the wife of W.B. Yeats, continued to oversee the printing of cards until the late 1960s. In 1969, W.B. Yeats's children, Michael and Anne Yeats, took up the press with Liam Miller, publishing several illustrated works of literature in the 1970s.

Dun Emer Press

The Cuala Press was originally part of the Dun Emer Press, which E.C. Yeats managed from 1902 to 1908, founded as part of the Dun Emer craft studio by Elizabeth Gleeson, E.C. Yeats, and Lily Yeats. The press was located in Gleeson's house in Dundrum, County Dublin, Ireland, and was a site where young women could live, be trained, and work in bookbinding, printing, and embroidery. Like the Cuala Press, the Dun Emer Press aimed to publish works by Irish authors and Jack B. Yeats did much of the illustration work. W.B. Yeats was the literary editor of the press and subsidized its operations as it was not financially successful. The press produced eleven literary titles including Yeats's In the Seven Woods: being poems of the Irish heroic age.

Dun Emer was named after Emer, the wife of the hero Cúchulainn in the Ulster Cycle of Irish mythology in Irish mythology, who was known for her artistic abilities.

Periodicals in Ireland

While periodicals were not printed often in 19th-century Ireland, in the early 20th century, periodicals advocating for an Irish Ireland, a republican Ireland, a workers' republic, a Catholic Ireland, the use of the Irish language, and the rights of women began to emerge, helping to shape the final phase of the struggle for Irish independence from British rule.

Content

A Broadside includes poems on a variety of subjects, although many engage with Irish everyday life, as well as the increasingly tense political scene at the time, head-on. The use of Irish place names is abundant; for example, "O'Reilly From the County Kerry" in issue No. 8 of the seventh year sees an unnamed narrator yearning for a man in Kerry. In issue No. 1 of the second year, the poems "The Gay Old Hag" and "Rags and Bones" by Seamus O'Sullvian are featured. "The Gay Old Hag" uses the phrase "the shan van vocht," which is a phonetic reading of the Irish phrase "An tSean bhean Bhocht" or "The Poor Old Women." It was the name of a song that dated to the 1798 Irish rebellion and gained notoriety as a seditious text, becoming the name of a popular historical novel and nationalist magazine in the 1890s. The ballad ends, "Yes old Ireland will be free from the centre to the sea, / And hurrah! for liberty," says the Shan Van Vocht." "The Gay Old Hag" states "Remember '98, says the shan van vocht / When our brave sons you sought to defeat, / You thought to defeat, says the shan van vocht, / But we beat you out compleat, says the shan van vocht, / Now you're nearly out of date, says the shan van vocht," updating the 1798 ballad. In the same issue, Seamus O'Sullivan's poem, "Rags and Bones," is featured, which speaks of "a little trunk of rags and bones // over the uneven cobblestones," invoking the image of bodies ravaged by violence against the imagery of children clamoring for toys.

Authors include W.B. Yeats, John Masefield, Jack B. Yeats (Wolfe T. MacGowan), James Guthrie, James Stephens, and Seamus O'Sullivan.

Material Analysis

A Broadside was printed at the "Cuala Press, Churchtown, Dundrum, County Dublin", Ireland, "[p]ublished by E.C. Yeats." There is an imprint on the No. 1, June 1908, issue of the first year: Dun Emer Press. Though the Yeats family had separated from Dun Emer, Yeats retained the Dun Emer Press imprint for A Broadside. In addition to the name of the publisher, name of the press, and name of the authors and illustrator, this may constitute some form of copyright, asserting a "brand" and ownership of the work. According to Villanova University, it was printed on an Albion hand press built in 1853.

Substrate

The sheets are made out of paper from the Swift Brook Paper Mill in Saggat, County Dublin, where the paper used to print the Easter Proclamation in 1916, a formal assertion of the Irish Republic as a sovereign, independent state, was sourced. Swift Brook Paper Mill was W.B. Yeats's mill of choice. The material, which has a cotton-y, rag-like quality to it, was made with rags collected daily in Dublin. The material is thin and the ink can be seen through the paper. The Swift Brook Paper Mill was also used by Irish revolutionary James Connolly to print The Socialist. It closed in 1972 after beginning paper production 187 years prior.

Format

Each issue of A Broadside is a broadside folded once to produce four pages—a folio format. Each sheet of an issue is folded once and printed on both sides. Despite the title of the series, A Broadside, the issues of A Broadside do not appear to be true broadsides as they are printed on both sides, folded into booklets, and seemingly intended to be distributed rather than posted. A subscription was "twelve shillings a year post free," suggesting that people could pay a recurring price each year for access to A Broadside. The typeface, Caslon 14pt, was selected by Lily Yeats according to Villanova University.

The second and third page of issue No. 10 of the second year of A Broadside.

Binding and Structure

Each sheet is not bound to each other, existing in its own form; however, they are stored in a sturdy red slipcase. There is no design, illustration, or pattern on the slipcase, Its high, clean, and unworn quality suggests that it is contemporary. However, Villanova University has a set of A Broadside in a similar slipcase, blue, made of Irish linen, with a hand-colored label of a pirate with a mandolin by Jack B. Yeats. That slipcase, like the one at the Univesity of Pennsylvania, is intended to hold 28 issues of A Broadside, suggesting that it may be a product of the same time.

These documents, published on varying dates between 1908 and 1915, could not have been retained in the way that the Kislak Center's copies are until the date of the last publication in this series. However, that is not to say this linen could not have been developed for this purpose beforehand during the time when A Broadside was being published.

Navigation

In every issue, the title of the series “A BROADSIDE” is printed at the top of the first page in the largest font. Every other piece of text appears in the same size font. Above this, it states the year of the issue (to the left), and centered below it, it states the date. Below this and aligned to the left, it states who it was published by, what press, the name and location of the press, and the cost of a subscription. This is all capitalized. Then an image separates this information from the main text (which is in lowercase). In the booklet, there are two poems separated by an image. Most poems, though not all, have a centered, capitalized title, italicized, centered subheading beneath it, the main text, and then the name of the author. Occasionally, the name of the author appears at the bottom or does not appear at all. Below this and aligned to the right is the phrase “300 copies only.” A second image on the second page separates the first poem from the second with the same information if available. Again, some poems don’t have titles, subheadings, or named authors. Most of the time, the third image, which is always on the third page, appears by itself without any supporting text on that page. However, this varies by issue.

Issue No. 5 of the first year of A Broadside.

Illustrations

Each issue of A Broadside has three illustrations, one on each page, excluding the last page, which is blank. Two are usually hand-colored. More often than not, the photo on the third page is uncolored, although this varies by issue. Each illustration is signed by Jack B. Yeats, E.C. Yeats’ brother, usually in the bottom left or bottom right corner. Many of the illustrations prominently feature traveling and/or the countryside. Likewise, horses, ships, and pirates, popular motifs in Jack's work, are often present.

Marginalia, Annotations, and Marks

Numbers written in pencil appear in the bottom right of the last page, which is otherwise blank. These may be catalog numbers or other numbers used as library resource identifiers.

Numbers on the last page of an issue of A Broadside.

There is little asemic writing in these issues, though there are small pencil marks at the bottom of some such as in the October 1914 issue. Many people follow a text with a pencil for focus or to take notes on another sheet of paper, such as a researcher viewing this text in a library, and these marks may have been made accidentally. There is a tear in the July 1909 issue at the bottom of the first and second page.

Significance

Although the periodical is not well-known today, A Broadside is the quintessence of the Irish Literary Revival, promoting Irish authors such as W.B. Yeats, James Stephens, and Lady Gregory, who use Irish mythology, history, and folklore to create an Irish national consciousness. A Broadside, which was published monthly for seven years, sees the development of an Irish national identity in real-time. Even when navigating the fraught politics of the time, A Broadside pushed a nationalist identity centered on idealized representations of Irish rural life, depicting Ireland as a stable, industrious country in contrast to English stereotypes. A Broadside also includes translations from Irish to English and uses the Irish language, reflecting the tension between the Gaelic Revival and the Irish Literary Revival and the politics of language. Likewise, poems from A Broadside about British colonialism remain strikingly relevant today as Northern Ireland is still a part of the UK as of 2024 and the hope of achieving a united Ireland, which resulted in the Troubles in Northern Ireland later in the 20th century, is still widely discussed.

A Broadside also highlights the efforts of E.C. Yeats, whose legacy is often overshadowed by her brothers, W.B. Yeats and Jack B. Yeats. Although W.B. Yeats and Jack B. Yeats helped to edit and illustrate the publication, E.C. Yeats is the name that appears most prominently in every issue, capitalized, as W.B.'s name does not appear (outside of poems attributed to him) and Jack's only appears in the small, barely discernable signatures on his artwork. The Cuala Press was a valuable asset to the Irish Literary Revival, printing, promoting, and publicizing new works of its authors. Likewise, the Cuala Press was largely operated by women and played a key role in the training of women as bookbinders, printers, and embroiderers, who despite being often neglected in book history, are frequently at the center of its legacy. Yeats commented that she wanted to "revive the beautiful craft of book printing" in Ireland, and A Broadside was an important facet of that journey. Several female writers are also featured in A Broadside, providing them with a creative outlet at a time when their work was undervalued.