A modern day chapbook.

Chapbook is a generic term to cover a particular genre of pocket-sized booklet, popular from the sixteenth through to the later part of the nineteenth century. No exact definition can be applied. Chapbook can mean anything that would have formed part of the stock of chapmen, a variety of pedlar. The word chapman probably comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for barter, buy and sell. Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1116x1404, 432 KB) Summary A modern chapbook, in this case for a party game. ... Image File history File linksMetadata Download high-resolution version (1116x1404, 432 KB) Summary A modern chapbook, in this case for a party game. ... A Chapman, plural Chapmen was an itinerant seller of chapbooks, broadside ballads, and other items in early modern Britain. ... A peddler, Brit. ...

The term chapbook was formalised by bibliophiles of the nineteenth century, as a variety of ephemera. It includes many kinds of printed material, such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales, children's literature and almanacs. Where there were illustrations, they would be popular prints. Bibliophilia is the love of books; a bibliophile is a lover of books. ... Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Ephemera are documents published with a short intended lifetime. ... Polish soldiers reading a German leaflet during the Warsaw Uprising A pamphlet is an unbound booklet (that is, without a hard cover or binding). ... poop ... A nursery rhyme is a traditional rubbish sony that edgar nursery invented while feeding a pig from his asssong or poem taught to young children, originally in the nursery. ... The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ... Folklore is the ethnographic concept of the tales, legends, or superstitions current among a particular ethnic population, a part of the oral history of a particular culture. ... Popular Prints is a term for printed images of generally low artistic quality which were sold cheaply in Europe and later the New World from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, often with text as well as images. ...

History

There are records from Cambridgeshire as early as in 1553 of a man offering a scurrilous ballad "maistres mass" at an alehouse, and a pedlar selling "lytle books" to people, including a patcher of old clothes in 1578. These sales are probably characteristic of the market for chapbooks. Cambridgeshire (abbreviated Cambs) is a county in England, bordering Lincolnshire to the north, Norfolk to the northeast, Suffolk to the east, Essex and Hertfordshire to the south, and Bedfordshire and Northamptonshire to the west. ... // Events June 26 - Christs Hospital in London gets a Royal Charter July 6 - Edward VI of England dies July 10 - Lady Jane Grey is proclaimed Queen of England - for the next nine days July 18 - Lord Mayor of London proclaims Queen Mary as the rightful Queen - Lady Jane Grey... Events January 31 - Battle of Gemblours - Spanish forces under Don John of Austria and Alexander Farnese defeat the Dutch. ...

Broadside ballads were popular songs, sold for a penny or halfpenny in the streets of towns and villages around Britain between the sixteenth and early twentieth centuries. They preceded chapbooks, but had similar content, marketing and distribution systems. Printed lyrics of popular songs were extremely popular from the 16th century until the early 20th century. ...

Chapbooks gradually disappeared from the mid nineteenth century in the face of competition from cheap newspapers and, especially in Scotland, religious tract societies that regarded them as "ungodly."

Although the form originated in Britain, many were made in the U.S. during the same period. Chapbooks are published in South America even today.

Survival

Because of their flimsy nature such ephemera rarely survive as individual items. They were aimed at buyers without formal libraries, and, in an era when paper was rare and had many uses, were used for wrapping or baking. Paper has also always had hygienic uses and there are contemporary references to the use of chapbooks as bum fodder (i.e. toilet paper). Ephemera are documents published with a short intended lifetime. ...

Many of the surviving chapbooks come from the collections of Samuel Pepys between 1661 and 1688 which are now held at Magdalene College, Cambridge. Anthony Wood also collected 65 chapbooks, (including 20 from before 1660), which are now at The Bodleian Library. There are also significant Scottish collections. Samuel Pepys, FRS (23 February 1633 – 26 May 1703) was an English naval administrator and Member of Parliament, famous chiefly for his comprehensive diary. ... 1661 (MDCLXI) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar (or a common year starting on Tuesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). ... // Events A high-powered conspiracy of notables, the Immortal Seven, invite William and Mary to depose James II of England. ... Magdalene College could be Magdalen College, Oxford Magdalene College, Cambridge This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Geography Status City (1951) Region East of England Admin. ... Entrance to the Library, with the coats-of-arms of several Oxford colleges The Bodleian Library, the main research library of the University of Oxford, is one of the oldest libraries in Europe, and in England is second in size only to the British Library. ...

Modern collectors, such as Peter Opie, have chiefly a scholarly interest in the form. Peter Mason Opie (1918 - 1982) was an English specialist in childrens literature, and the customs of schoolchildren. ...

Production and distribution

Chapbooks are mostly small paper-covered booklets, usually printed on a single sheet folded into books of 8, 12, 16 and 24 pages, often illustrated with crude woodcuts, which sometimes bear no relation to the text. They were produced cheaply. One collector, Harry Weiss, wrote: "the printing in many cases was execrable, the paper even worse, and the woodcut illustrations, some of which did duty for various tales regardless of their fitness, were sometimes worse than the paper and presswork combined". However, the category has no real limits: some chapbooks were long, some well produced, and some even historically accurate. A blank sheet of paper Paper is a commodity of thin material produced by the amalgamation of fibers, typically vegetable fibers composed of cellulose, which are subsequently held together by hydrogen bonding. ... Four horsemen of the Apocalypse by Albrecht Dürer. ...

The centre of chapbook and ballad production was London, and until the Great Fire of London the printers were based around London Bridge. However, a feature of chapbooks is the proliferation of provincial printers, especially in Scotland and Newcastle upon Tyne. This article is about the capital of England and the United Kingdom. ... Detail of painting from 1666 of the Great Fire of London by an unknown artist, depicting the fire as it would have appeared on the evening of Tuesday, 4 September from a boat in the vicinity of Tower Wharf. ... For other uses, see London Bridge (disambiguation). ...

Content

Chapbooks were an important medium for the dissemination of popular culture to the common people, especially in rural areas. They were a medium of entertainment, information and (generally unreliable) history. They are now valued as a record of popular culture, preserving cultural artifacts that may not survive in any other form.

Chapbooks were priced for sales to workers, although their market was not limited to the working classes. Broadside ballads were sold for a halfpenny, or a few pence. Prices of chapbooks were from 2d. to 6d., when agricultural labourers wages were 12d. per day. It needs to be remembered that in early modern England literacy was not uncommon, and in Scotland probably more so. Many working people were readers, even if not writers, and pre-industrial working patterns provided periods during which they could read. Chapbooks were undoubtedly used for reading to family groups or groups in alehouses.

They even contributed to the development of literacy. Francis Kirkman, the author and publisher, wrote about how they fired his imagination and his love of books. There is other evidence of their use by autodidacts. Francis Kirkman (1632 - c. ...

Nevertheless, the numbers printed are astonishing. In the 1660s as many as 400,000 almanacs were printed annually, enough for one family in three in England. One seventeenth century publisher of chapbooks in London had in stock one book for every 15 families in the country. In the 1520s the Oxford bookseller, John Dorne, noted in his day-book selling up to 190 ballads a day at a halfpenny each. The probate inventory of the stock of Charles Tias, of The sign of the Three Bibles on London Bridge, in 1664 included books and printed sheets to make c.90,000 chapbooks (inc. 400 reams of paper) and 37,500 ballad sheets. Tias was not regarded as an outstanding figure in the trade. The inventory of Josiah Blare, of The Sign of the Looking Glass on London Bridge, in 1707 listed 31,000 books, plus 257 reams of printed sheets. A conservative estimate of their sales in Scotland alone in the second half of the eighteenth century was over 200,000 per year. An almanac (also spelled almanack, especially in Commonwealth English) is an annual publication containing tabular information in a particular field or fields often arranged according to the calendar. ... Oxford is a city and local government district in Oxfordshire, England, with a population of 134,248 (2001 census). ... A ballad is a story in song, usually a narrative song or poem. ... Events March 12 - New Jersey becomes a colony of England. ... Events January 1 - John V is crowned King of Portugal March 26 - The Acts of Union becomes law, making the separate Kingdoms of England and Scotland into one country, the Kingdom of Great Britain. ...

These printers provided chapbooks to chapmen on credit, who carried them around the country, selling from door to door, at markets and fairs, and returning to pay for the stock they sold. This facilitated wide distribution and large sales with minimum outlay, and also provided the printers with feedback about what titles were most popular. Popular works were reprinted, pirated, edited, and produced in different editions. Francis Kirkman, whose eye was always on the market, wrote two sequels to the popular Don Bellianus of Greece, first printed in 1598. A Chapman, plural Chapmen was an itinerant seller of chapbooks, broadside ballads, and other items in early modern Britain. ... Francis Kirkman (1632 - c. ... A sequel is a work of fiction (e. ...

Publishers also issued catalogues, and chapbooks are found in the libraries of provincial yeomen and gentry. John Whiting, a Quaker yeoman imprisoned at Ilchester, Somerset in the 1680s had books sent by carrier from London, and left for him at an inn. Yeoman is an antiquated term for farmers, tradesmen and other members of the early English middle class. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ... Ilchester is a village in Somerset, England, situated on the River Yeo five miles north of Yeovil. ... Somerset is a county in the south-west of England. ...

Content

Pepys had a collection of ballads bound into volumes, under the following classifications, into which could fit the subject matter of most chapbooks: 1. Devotion and Morality 2. History – true and fabulous 3. Tragedy: viz. Murders, executions, and judgements of God 4. State and Times 5. Love – pleasant 6. Ditto – unpleasant 7. Marriage, Cuckoldry, &c. 8. Sea – love, gallantry & actions 9. Drinking and good fellowship 10. Humour, frollicks and mixt.

The stories in many of the popular chapbooks can be traced back to much earlier origins. Bevis of Hampton, was an Anglo-Norman romance of thirteenth century, which probably drew on earlier themes. The structure of The Seven Sages of Rome was from the orient, and was used by Chaucer. Many jests about ignorant and greedy clergy in chapbooks were taken from The Friar and the Boy printed about 1500 by Wynkyn de Worde, and The Sackfull of News, (1557). The Seven Wise Masters (also called The Seven Sages or The Seven Sages of Rome) is a cycle of stories of Eastern origin. ... Chaucer: Illustration from Cassells History of England, circa 1902 Chanticleer the rooster from an outdoor production of Chanticleer and the Fox at Ashby_de_la_Zouch castle Geoffrey Chaucer (ca. ... 1500 was a common year starting on Monday (see link for calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ... Wynkyn de Worde, born in Alsace, was the successor to William Caxton in his English printing business, taking over and running Caxtons press after his death. ... Events Spain is effectively bankrupt. ...

Historical stories set in a mythical and fantastical past were popular. The selection is interesting. Charles I, and Oliver Cromwell do not appear as historical figures in the Pepys collection, and Elizabeth I only once. The Wars of the Roses and the English Civil War do not appear at all. Henry VIII & Henry II appear in disguise, standing up for the right with cobblers & millers and then inviting the to Court and rewarding them. There was a pattern of high born heroes overcoming reduced circumstances by valour, such as St George, Guy of Warwick, Robin Hood (who at this stage has yet to give to the poor what he was stealing from the rich), and heroes of low birth who achieve status through force of arms, such as Clim of Clough, and William of Cloudesley. Clergy often appear as figures of fun, and stupid countrymen were also popular (e.g., The Wise Men of Gotham). Other works were aimed at regional and rural audience (e.g., The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse). Charles I (19 November 1600 – 30 January 1649) was King of England, King of Scotland, and King of Ireland from 27 March 1625 until his execution in 1649. ... Oliver Cromwell (April 25, 1599–September 3, 1658) was an English military and political leader best known for making England a republic and leading the Commonwealth of England. ... Elizabeth I (7 September 1533 – 24 March 1603 ) was Queen of England and Queen of Ireland from 17 November 1558 until her death. ... The Wars of the Roses (1455–1487) is the name generally given to the intermittent civil war fought over the throne of England between adherents of the House of Lancaster and the House of York. ... The English Civil War consisted of a series of armed conflicts and political machinations that took place between Parliamentarians (known as Roundheads) and Royalists (known as Cavaliers) between 1642 and 1651. ... Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) from 22 April 1509 until his death. ... Henry II of England (5 March 1133-6 July 1189) ruled as Count of Anjou, Duke of Normandy, and as King of England (1154–1189) and, at various times, controlled parts of Wales, Scotland[], eastern Ireland, and western France. ... For alternate uses, see Saint George (disambiguation) Saint George on horseback rides alongside a wounded dragon being led by a princess, late 19th century engraving. ... Guy of Warwick is a legendary English romantic hero popular in England and France from the 13th to the 17th century. ... Robin Hood memorial statue in Nottingham. ... William Wallace Denslows illustrations for Wise Men of Gotham, from a 1901 edition of Mother Goose The wise men, according to Denslow Wise Men of Gotham, the early name given to the people of the village of Gotham, Nottinghamshire, in allusion to their reputed simplicity. ...

From 1597 works appeared aimed at specific trades, such as clothiers, weavers and shoemakers. The latter were commonly literate. Thomas Deloney, a weaver, wrote Thomas of Reading, about six clothiers from Reading, Gloucester, Worcester, Exeter, Salisbury & Southampton, travelling together and meeting at Basingstoke their fellows from Kendal, Manchester and Halifax. In his, Jack of Newbury, 1600, set in Henry VIII's time, an apprentice to a broadcloth weaver takes over his business and marries his widow on his death. On achieving success, he is liberal to the poor and refuses a knighthood for his substantial services to the king. Events 17 January - A court case in Guildford recorded evidence that a certain plot of land was used for playing “kreckett” (i. ... Genera Many:see text The Weavers are small passerine birds related to the finches. ... Shoemakers in Bangladesh Shoemaking is a traditional handicraft profession, which has now been largely superseded by industrial manufacture of footwear. ... Reading is a town, unitary authority (the Borough of Reading) and urban area in the English county of Berkshire. ... Reading is a town, unitary authority (the Borough of Reading) and urban area in the English county of Berkshire. ... Gloucester (pronounced ) is a city and district in the English county of Gloucestershire, close to the Welsh border. ... The city of Worcester (pronounced ) is a city and the county town of Worcestershire in England, situated some 30 miles (48 km) southwest of Birmingham and 29 miles (47 km) north of Gloucester. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this articles infobox may require cleanup. ... Salisbury (IPA: , or — moving from RP to local dialect) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England. ... Southampton is a city, unitary authority and major port situated on the south coast of England. ... Statistics Population: 152,573 (Borough, 2001) Ordnance Survey OS grid reference: SU637523 Administration Borough: Basingstoke and Deane Shire county: Hampshire Region: South East England Constituent country: England Sovereign state: United Kingdom Other Ceremonial county: Hampshire Historic county: Hampshire Services Police force: Hampshire Constabulary Fire and rescue: Hampshire Ambulance: South Central... Kendal is a small town in Cumbria, England. ... This article is becoming very long. ... Halifax is a town in the Metropolitan Borough of Calderdale in West Yorkshire, England, with a population of about 82,000. ... Newbury is the principal town in the west of the county of Berkshire in the United Kingdom. ... 1600 was a leap year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar (or a leap year starting on Tuesday of the 10-day slower Julian calendar). ... Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England and Lord of Ireland (later King of Ireland) from 22 April 1509 until his death. ... This article or section does not cite its references or sources. ...

Other examples from the Pepys collection include The Countryman's Counsellor, or Everyman his own Lawyer, and Sports and Pastimes, written for schoolboys, including magic tricks, like how to "fetch a shilling out of a handkerchief", write invisibly, make roses out of paper, snare wild duck, and make a maid-servant fart uncontrollably.

The provinces and Scotland had their own local heroes. Robert Burns commented that one of the first two books he read in private was the history of Sir William Wallace that poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest Robert Burns, foremost Scottish poet Robert Burns (January 25, 1759 – July 21, 1796) was a poet and a lyricist. ... For other persons named William Wallace, see William Wallace (disambiguation). ...

Influence

They had a wide and continuing influence. 80% of English folk songs collected by early twentieth century collectors have been linked to printed broadsides, including over 90 of which could only be derived from those printed before 1700. It has been suggested the majority of surviving ballads can be traced to 1550-1600 by internal evidence. Folk music, in the original sense of the term, is music by and of the people. ...

One of the most popular and influential chapbooks was Richard Johnson's Seven Champions of Christendom (1596), believed to be the source for the introduction of the character St George into English folk plays. Events February 5 - 26 catholics crucified in Nagasaki, Japan. ... For alternate uses, see Saint George (disambiguation) Saint George on horseback rides alongside a wounded dragon being led by a princess, late 19th century engraving. ... Folk plays such as Hoodening, Guising and Mumming are generally verse sketches performed in countryside pubs, private houses or the open air, at set times of the year such as the Winter or Summer solstices. ...

Robert Greene's novel, Dorastus and Fawnia, (originally Pandosto) (1588), the basis of Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale was still being published in cheap editions in the 1680s. Some stories were still being published in the nineteenth century, (e.g., Jack of Newbury, Friar Bacon, Dr Faustus and The Seven Champions of Christendom). Robert Greene, BA, MA, (1558 – September 3, 1592) was an English playwright, poet, pamphleteer, and prose writer. ... 1588 was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar or a leap year starting on Monday of the Julian calendar. ... Autolycus (1836) by Charles Robert Leslie This article is about the play by Shakespeare. ... The Seven Champions of Christendom is a moniker referring to St. ...

Modern chapbooks

Chapbook is also a term currently used to denote low-cost hard copy production, particularly of poetry. Poetry chapbooks tend to focus on a specific theme, story, or form to unify the entire book. The Chinese poem Quatrain on Heavenly Mountain by Emperor Gaozong (Song Dynasty) Poetry (from the Greek , poiesis, making or creating) is a form of art in which language is used for its aesthetic qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its ostensible meaning. ...

The genre has been revitalized in the past 20 years by the widespread availability of low-cost copy centers and the cultural revolutions spurred by both zines and slam poetry, the latter generating hundreds upon hundreds of self-published chapbooks that are used to fund tours. This article or section should be merged with Zine This article needs cleanup. ... Nuyorican Poets Cafe, New York City Slam poetry is a postmodern performance poetry, a form of spoken word performed at a competitive poetry event, called a slam, at which poets perform their own poems (or, in rare cases, those of others) that are judged on a numeric scale by randomly...

Sources

• Spufford, Margaret Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in seventeenth Century England, (Methuen, 1981)
• Furnivall, F. J. ed., Captain Cox, His Ballads and Books, 1871.
• University of South Carolina, G. Ross Roy Collection[1]
• Neuburg, Victor E. Chapbooks: a guide to reference material on English, Scottish and American chapbook literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (London: Woburn Press, 1972)
• Neuburg, Victor E. The penny histories: a study of chapbooks for young readers over two centuries (London: Oxford University Press, 1968)
• Weiss, Harry B. A book about chapbooks (Hatboro: Folklore Associates, 1969)
• Weiss, Harry B. A catalogue of chapbooks in the New York Public Library (New York: New York Public Library, 1936)

Frederick James Furnivall (February 4, 1825 - July 2, 1910), English philologist and editor, co-creator of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) and founder of literary societies. ...

Collections

The National Library of Scotland holds a large collection of Scottish chapbooks; approximately 4,000 of an estimated total of 15,000 published. Records for most Scottish chapbooks have been catalogued online. http://www.nls.uk/collections/rarebooks/collections/chapbooks.html

The Library of the University of Glasgow has over 1,000 examples throughout the collections, searchable online via the Scottish Chapbooks Catalogue of c.4,000 works, which covers the Lauriston Castle collection, Edinburgh City libraries and Stirling University. The University of South Carolina's G. Ross Roy Collection is collaborating in research for the Scottish Chapbook Project. http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/collection/chapbook.html

The Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford has over 30,000 ballads in several major collections. The original printed materials range from the 16th- to the 20th-Century. The Broadside Ballads project makes the digitised copies of the sheets and ballads available. http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/ballads/ballads.htm

Sir Frederick Madden’s Collection of Broadside Ballads, at Cambridge University Library, is possibly the largest collection from London and provincial presses between 1775 and 1850, with earlier eighteenth-century garlands and Irish volumes. http://microformguides.gale.com/Data/Introductions/30330FM.htm

The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Chapbook Collection has 1,900 chapbooks from England, Scotland, Ireland, France, and the United States, which were part of the Elisabeth W. Ball collection. Online search facility http://www.indiana.edu/~liblilly/chapbook.shtml

The Elizabeth Nesbitt Room, University of Pittsburgh, houses over 270 chapbooks printed in both England and America between the years 1650 to 1850 (a few Scottish chapbooks are included as well). Title list, bibliographic information and digital images of chapbook covers http://www.library.pitt.edu/libraries/is/enroom/chapbooks/chapbookpageindex.htm

Rutgers University, Special Collections and University Archives, houses the Harry Bischoff Weiss collection of 18th and 19th century chapbooks, illustrated with catchpenny prints. http://www.libraries.rutgers.edu/rul/libs/scua/scua.shtml

The John Rylands University Library (JRUL), University of Manchester, contains 600 items in The Sharpe Collection of Chapbooks, formed by Charles Kirkpatrick Sharpe. These are 19th-century items printed in Scotland and Newcastle upon Tyne. http://rylibweb.man.ac.uk/data2/spcoll/sharpe/

Literatura de Cordel Brazilian Chapbook Collection Library of Congress, American Folklife Center, has a collection of over 7200 chapbooks (literatura de cordel). Descended from the medieval troubadour and chapbook tradition of European literatura de cordel has been published in Brazil for over a century. http://www.loc.gov/rr/jrfell/2005-proj.html

The University of Guelph Library, Archival and Special Collections, has a collection of more than 550 chapbooks in its extensive Scottish holdings. All chapbooks are catalogued and accessible at http://www.lib.uoguelph.ca/resources/archives/Scottish/chapbooks.htm

The National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum, London, has a collection of ca. 850 chapbooks, all catalogued and available at http://catalogue.nal.vam.ac.uk/ A bibliographical catalogue of the Library's holdings will be published at the end of 2007. A visual register of all chapbooks, edited by Diane Spaul, is available at the Library's Main Counter.

See also

• Popular prints