SOURCE: Introduction to Cheap Print and Popular Piety, Cambridge University Press, 1991, pp. 1-8.

In the following excerpt, Watt rejects critical studies that portray the broadside ballad as appealing only to lower-class sensibilities, and argues that the ballads also made their way into “respected” culture as they served important social and cultural needs.

My decision to begin research in early modern English history was inspired by studies published over the past fifteen years which are loosely described as works on ‘popular culture’.¹ Margaret Spufford's work on the late seventeenth-century chapbook trade, in particular, raised a challenging set of questions.² How far back could this trade be traced? When did publishers begin to produce and distribute reading material consciously aimed at the humblest members of the literate public? The criterion of ‘cheapness’ seemed the best place to start, since price was the major constraining factor in book buying, after literacy...