This collection of 12 essays challenges and explores the notion that the ballad tradition in the British Isles and North America is a strictly oral tradition. Emerging from the collection is a complex picture of the various ways in which ballads were transmitted, their origins and their endurance.

The book begins with a highly useful note on the terminology used throughout, sources, abbreviations and collections of ballads with their websites. This is a helpful resource for looking up ballads referenced in the essays while reading, as well as keeping the sometimes overlapping terms such as ‘slip song’, ‘songster’, ‘garland’ and ‘chapbook’ straight.

Steve Roud's introduction strongly sets out the questions the collection strives to address. The 19th century has been previously neglected in studies of street literature, possibly because much of the surviving material is in large uncatalogued collections. He notes that the idea of a purely oral tradition actually died with the Reformation, when the vast majority of the population became literate. One of the aims of the collection is to unpack and explore the myth of the oral tradition, and where that tradition intersects with a literate society. Chapbooks were available cheaply to the most rural of people in the 19th century as society became more urban and mobile, and Roud's observation of this cultural background provides a strong context for the essays that follow.

David Atkinson's essay, ‘Was There Really a “Mass Extinction of Old Ballads” in the Romantic Period?’ investigates the extent to which the print trade influenced the development of the ballad tradition. He responds to an argument made by William St Clair in his The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004) that after 1600 a monopoly on printing effectively froze the popular canon, causing nearly 200 years of literature to be largely homogenous. The monopoly lasted until 1774 when Scottish booksellers challenged the copyright law, resulting in more large-scale printings of all manner of literature. The ‘mass extinction’ was a result of economic changes. By using examples of ballads from their first printing to collection in Child's English and Scottish Popular Ballads, Atkinson explores St Clair's contention. Ultimately the essay is inconclusive, owing to a lack of research on the subject as Atkinson notes, but calls attention to the ways in which ballads survived and were disseminated through different methods in print culture. Atkinson observes that some of the reasons for survival could have been an emotional investment in the idea of traditional ballads, which in turn led to them being maintained in print. The mass extinction, however, is not without merit either, as many ballads did disappear. Atkinson speculates that these ballads were regarded as somehow less traditional, which in itself gives rise to questions of what traditional means, when and by whom, that he does not fully address.

Seven of the essays in the collection focus on specific places that were significant to the ballad tradition, while the other five focus on collectors or questions of printing and transmission. Peter Wood's essay ‘The Newcastle Song Chapbooks’ highlights the printing activities and contributions to ballad culture of the most active publishing industry outside of London. By investigating the vast Robert White Collection in Newcastle University's library, Wood explores the chapbooks regional to Newcastle. White was a publisher and song collector from 19th-century Newcastle whose collection was rich in regional ballads and songs. Wood describes the various publishers who printed chapbooks, their history and some of their contents. He argues that the Newcastle material provides insight into the history of the region as the songs are unusually local in terms of events and language. Ultimately this is an interesting and useful insight into a little-studied area of ballad tradition.

In general, the essays in this collection highlight this understudied aspect of the ballad tradition's involvement in mass print publications. It is wide-ranging in focus as regards region, theory, people and print cultures, and fills a void in the greater picture of ballad studies. I would, however, have liked to have seen a contribution on the Scots-Appalachian ballads of the 19th century.