Broadside detailing a love letter

Commentary

This broadside begins: 'A LOVE LETTER, Sent to a Young Lady in this Neighbourhood.' The letter begins: 'My dear Miss Miller, The great love and tenderness I have hitherto experienced for you increases every day'. The reply begins: 'Sir, The uniform tendency of your behaviour from the earliest period of our acquaintance has inspired me'. The correspondence is between a Mr G. Lindsay and Miss Mary Miller, and the broadside was published by Henry.

Although the appeal of such broadsides might be hard to understand for a modern-day audience, love letters and dialogues between lovers were popular amongst broadside readers. Often given a humorous or slightly illicit slant, they were often more about what was not being said on the page than what was. The National Library of Scotland's broadside collection contains a number of other 'love letters', including a rather novel one that makes use of hieroglyphics.

Broadsides are single sheets of paper, printed on one side, to be read unfolded. They carried public information such as proclamations as well as ballads and news of the day. Cheaply available, they were sold on the streets by pedlars and chapmen. Broadsides offer a valuable insight into many aspects of the society they were published in, and the National Library of Scotland holds over 250,000 of them.

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