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Myers Literary Guide:
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The North-East
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JAMES CATNACH (1792 - 1841) James Catnach senior (1769-1813), the printer and publisher, worked in Alnwick before moving to Newcastle some time after 1792. His son, James Catnach, was born in Alnwick and after his father's death worked from Monmouth Court, Seven Dials, in London. He is said to have paid men to collect ballads from singers in country taverns. According to Charles Hindley, the historian of the Catnach Press, a fiddler was kept on the premises to assist in choosing the productions brought to him. The younger Catnach brought out children's tracts and ABCs, and some of his output was in the old ballad-publishing tradition, helping to preserve the texts of nursery rhymes and carols. He became notorious, however, for his sensational ballads and broadsides, mostly about crime, highwaymen, executions and political events. The broadside of the murder of Maria Marten in the Red Barn sold around a million copies, and the estimated sale of 'The Sorrowful Lamentation and Last Farewell of J.B. Rush' ran to two and a half million. Illustrated with crude woodcuts, these and other productions were widely distributed by itinerant hawkers. Some of this work stems from Catnach's own historical collections, and thus he stands late in a long tradition, but his emphasis on the sensational is considered to have done much to kill off the long-established ballad market. He retired from his lucrative trade in 1838.
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