Chapbook

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A chapbook is a small publication of up to about 40 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch.

In

.

The tradition of chapbooks arose in the 16th century, as soon as

.

The term "chapbook" for this type of literature was coined in the 19th century. The corresponding French term is bibliothèque bleue (blue library) because they were often wrapped in cheap blue paper that was usually reserved as a wrapping for sugar.^[2] The German term is Volksbuch (people's book). In Spain, they were known as pliegos de cordel (cordel sheets) or as pliegos sueltos (loose sheets) because they were literally loose sheets of paper folded once or twice in order to create a booklet in quarto format.^[2] Lubok is the Russian equivalent of the chapbook.^[3]

The term "chapbook" is also in use for present-day publications, commonly short, inexpensive booklets.^[4]

Etymology

Chapbook is first attested in English in 1824, and seems to derive from the word for the itinerant salesmen who would sell such books:

from which the modern adjective cheap was subsequently derived.

History

fairy-circle

from a 17th-century chapbook

] including a patcher of old clothes in 1578. These sales are probably characteristic of the market for chapbooks.

The form originated in Britain, but many were made in the U.S. during the same period. Chapbooks gradually disappeared from the mid-19th century in the face of competition from cheap newspapers and, especially in Scotland, from tract societies that regarded them as ungodly.

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 expensive, were used for wrapping or baking. Paper has also always had hygienic uses; there are contemporary references to the use of chapbooks as "bum fodder".^[8] Many of the surviving chapbooks come from the collections of Samuel Pepys between 1661 and 1688 which are now held at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The antiquary Anthony Wood also collected 65 chapbooks, including 20 from before 1660, which are now in the Bodleian Library. There are also significant Scottish collections, such as those held by the University of Glasgow^[9] and the National Library of Scotland.^[10]

Modern collectors, such as

.

Production and distribution

Chapbooks were cheap, anonymous publications that were the usual reading material for lower-class people who could not afford books. Members of the upper classes occasionally owned chapbooks, and sometimes bound them in leather. Printers typically tailored their texts for the popular market. Chapbooks were usually between four and twenty-four pages long, and produced on rough paper with crude, frequently recycled, woodcut illustrations. They sold in the millions.[13]^{[clarification needed]}

After 1696, English chapbook peddlers had to be licensed, and 2,500 of them were then authorized, 500 in London alone. In France, there were 3,500 licensed

The centre of the chapbook and ballad production was London, and until the Great Fire of London in 1666 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.^[14] The first Scottish publication was the tale of Tom Thumb, in 1682.^[1]

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. Though the content of chapbooks has been criticized as unsophisticated narratives which were heavily loaded with repetition and emphasized adventure through mostly anecdotal structures,^[15] they are 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

). Many working people were readers, if not writers, and pre-industrial working patterns provided periods during which they could read.

Chapbooks were used for reading to family groups or groups in alehouses. They contributed to the development of literacy, and there is evidence of their use by autodidacts.

In the 1660s as many as 400,000

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 approximately 90,000 chapbooks (including 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 sales in Scotland alone in the second half of the 18th century was over 200,000 per year.

Printers provided chapbooks on credit to

, 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.

Publishers also issued catalogues, and chapbooks are found in the libraries of provincial

, in the 1680s had books sent by carrier from London, and left for him at an inn.

Samuel 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 judgments 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 the 13th century, which probably drew on earlier themes. The structure of

, and The Sackfull of News (1557).

Historical stories set in a mythical and fantastical past were popular, while many significant historical figures and events appear rarely or not at all: in the Pepys collection,

The Wise Men of Gotham

). Other works were aimed at regional and rural audience (e.g., The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse).

From 1597 works were published that were aimed at specific trades, such as

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.

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",^[This quote needs a citation] 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 ... poured a Scottish prejudice in my veins which will boil along there till the flood-gates of life shut in eternal rest".^{[This quote needs a citation]}

Influence

Chapbooks had a wide and continuing influence. Eighty percent of English

collected by early-20th-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.

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

.

The Seven Champions of Christendom

).

Modern chapbooks

Chapbook is also a term currently used to denote publications of up to about 40 pages, usually

.

The genre has been revitalized in the past 40 years by the widespread availability of first

With the recent^[when?] popularity of blogs, online literary journals, and other online publishers, short collections of poetry published online are frequently referred to as "online chapbooks", "electronic chapbooks", "e-chapbooks", or "e-chaps".^{[citation needed]}

Stephen King wrote a few parts of an early draft of The Plant and sent them out as chapbooks to his friends instead of Christmas cards in 1982, 1983, and 1985. "Philtrum Press produced just three installments before the story was shelved, and the original editions have been hotly sought-after collector's items."^{[17][failed verification]}

In 2019, three different publishers (

Chapbook collections

• The
  Lowland Scots and Gaelic.^[1] Records for most Scottish chapbooks have been catalogued online. Approximately 3,000 of these have been digitised and can be accessed from the Library's Digital Gallery. A project is underway to add every chapbook in the collection to Wikisource at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Wikisource:WikiProject_NLS
  .
• The Glasgow University Library^[20] 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.
• The Bodleian Library of the University of Oxford^[21] 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.
• Sir
  Frederick Madden's Collection of Broadside Ballads, at Cambridge University Library,^[22]
  is possibly the largest collection from London and provincial presses between 1775 and 1850, with earlier 18th-century garlands and Irish volumes.
• The Lilly Library, Indiana University, Chapbook Collection^[23] 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
• The Elizabeth Nesbitt Room, University of Pittsburgh^[24] 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
• Rutgers University, Special Collections and University Archives^[25] houses the Harry Bischoff Weiss collection of 18th- and 19th-century chapbooks, illustrated with catchpenny prints.
• The
  John Rylands University Library (JRUL), University of Manchester^[26] 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.
• Literatura de Cordel Brazilian Chapbook Collection Library of Congress, American Folklife Center^[27] 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.
• The
  University of Guelph Library, Archival and Special Collections,^[28]
  has a collection of more than 550 chapbooks in its extensive Scottish holdings.
• The National Art Library, Victoria & Albert Museum, London^[29] has a collection of c. 800 chapbooks, all catalogued.
• The McGill University Library^[30] has over 900 British and American chapbooks published in the 18th and 19th centuries. The chapbooks have been digitized and can be read online.
• The Grupo de investigación sobre relaciones de sucesos (siglos XVI–XVIII) en la Península Ibérica,
  Universidade da Coruña^[31] Catalog and Digital Library of "Relaciones de sucesos" (16th–18th centuries). Bibliographical database of more than 5,000 chap-books, pamphlets, Early modern press news, etc. Facsimilar reproduction of many of the copies: Catálogo y Biblioteca Digital de Relaciones de Sucesos (siglos XVI–XVIII)
• The Ball State University Digital Media Repository Chapbooks collection^[32] provides online access to 173 chapbooks from the 19th and 20th centuries.
• The Elizabeth Nesbitt Room, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania^[33]
• Cambridge Digital Library^[34] hosts a growing number of digital facsimiles of Spanish chapbooks from the collections of Cambridge University Library and the British Library.
• The Biblioteca Nacional de España (National Library of Spain) has a digitized collection of chapbooks.^[35]
• The project Untangling the cordel offers a collection of almost 1000 pliegos de cordel, the Spanish equivalent of English chapbooks, kept at the University Library of the University of Geneva.^[36]
• Mapping Pliegos is a portal dedicated to 19^th-century Spanish chapbook literature. It brings together the digitised collections of over a dozen partner libraries.

See also

• Booklet
• Gothic Blue Books
• Lubok
• Pamphlet
• Penny dreadful
• Špalíček (ballet)
• Zine

References

• The Department of Rare Books and Special Collections. "The Scottish Chapbook Project". University of South Carolina G. Ross Roy Collection.
• Furnivall, F. J., ed. (1871). Captain Cox, His Ballads and Books
  .
• Neuburg, Victor E. (1972). Chapbooks: A guide to reference material on English, Scottish and American chapbook literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (2nd ed.). London: Woburn Press.
• Neuburg, Victor E. (1968). The penny histories: a study of chapbooks for young readers over two centuries (illustrated with facsimiles of seven chapbooks). London: Oxford University Press (The Juvenile Library.
• Neuburg, Victor E. (1964). Chapbooks: a bibliography of references to English and American chapbook literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. London: Vine Press.
• Neuburg, Victor E. (1952). A select handlist of references to chapbook literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Edinburgh: privately printed by J. A. Birkbeck.
• Spufford, Margaret (1981). Small Books and Pleasant Histories: Popular Fiction and its Readership in seventeenth Century England. Methuen.
• Weiss, Harry B. (1969). A book about chapbooks. Hatboro: Folklore Associates.
• Weiss, Harry B. (1936). A catalogue of chapbooks in the New York Public Library. New York: New York Public Library.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Chapbooks.

• "Chapbook" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 5 (11th ed.). 1911.
• Chapbooks with Scottish imprint from 1790-1890 Collection at University of Stirling Archives