A provincial broadside of hymns by John Atkinson Barnard Castle c1850s

ATKINSON, John, printer. A Selection of Original Hymns.
 
Barnard Castle: Printed by John Atkinson, Stamp-Office, Barnard Castle, c. 1840s.
 
Broadside (approx. 380 × 210 mm). Printed within a decorative typographic border, with two wood-engraved vignettes at head (rustic pastoral scenes). Text in four columns. Light folds and minor creasing, small edge nicks and slight loss at the margins, faint mounting traces at the upper edge on the verso, but a well-preserved, very good example.
 
A provincial devotional broadside containing four hymns: three “Morning Hymns” and one “A Hymn for Good Friday,” together with a “Morning Hymn for Easter Sunday.” The verses are characteristic of mid-nineteenth-century evangelical hymnody, concerned with daily prayer, penitence, and the cycle of the Christian year.
 
The Barnard Castle imprint adds particular interest. John Atkinson was an active local printer, bookseller and stationer from the 1830s onwards, advertising himself as the seller of “the cheapest books, writing papers, and every other description of stationery.” His stamp-office was among the small regional presses serving County Durham’s growing literate population, producing broadsides, chapbooks and religious ephemera for domestic or chapel use.