Lines of succession in an English ballad tradition: the publishing history and textual descent of The Wandering Jew’s chronicle

This paper combines bibliography, book history and traditional textual criticism with phylogenetic analysis in order to infer the publishing history and textual descent of a short printed ballad history of England – The Wandering Jew’s Chronicle. Probably first published in 1634, The Wandering Jew’s Chronicle is usually known as a broadside ballad – a cheap, printed song-sheet – illustrated with woodcut portraits of kings and queens of England. It remained in print until c.1830, its text illustrations updated to the present. While in partial synchrony with English history, much of its publishing history and textual descent is uncertain. The paper demonstrates how historical evidence, taken in particular from book trade history, may be usefully combined with textual and material-bibliographic evidence and that it is at times essential for understanding the descent of the text. The textual descent of the ballad is visualised in a stemma that summarises key findings from both traditional and phylogenetic analyses.