A chapbook is a small printed booklet that was widely used for street literature in early modern Europe. These books were made cheaply, often with simple woodcut illustrations and printed on one sheet folded into 8, 12, 16, or 24 pages. Some were stitched together with thread. Printers gave chapbooks to sellers called chapmen on credit. These sellers sold the books door-to-door and at markets and fairs, then paid the printers for the books they sold. The tradition of chapbooks began in the 16th century, when printed books became more affordable. Their popularity grew the most during the 17th and 18th centuries. Chapbooks included many types of short-lived materials, such as almanacs, children's stories, folk tales, ballads, nursery rhymes, pamphlets, poems, and writings about politics or religion. Today, the word "chapbook" is still used by publishers to describe small, low-cost booklets.
Terminology
The word "chapbook" was first recorded in English in 1824. It likely comes from the word "chapman," which was used for traveling sellers who sold goods, including books, after printing was invented. The word "chapman" itself comes from the Old English word "cēap," meaning "barter," "business," or "dealing," which is also the root of the modern word "cheap."
In English, "chapbooks" are similar to Portuguese Cordel literature and French "blue library" books, which were often wrapped in inexpensive blue paper, the same kind used for packaging sugar. In German, these books are called "Volksbuch," meaning "people's book." In Spanish, they were known as "pliegos sueltos," or "loose sheets," because each was made from separate pieces of paper. In Russia, these books are called "Lubok books."
History
Broadside ballads were popular songs sold for a penny or halfpenny in towns and villages across Britain from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. They came before chapbooks but shared similar content, marketing, and distribution methods. Records from Cambridgeshire show a man selling a shocking ballad called "maistres mass" at an alehouse in 1553, and a peddler selling "lytle books" to people, including someone mending old clothes, in 1578. These sales likely reflect the same market as chapbooks.
The format began in Britain but was also used in North America. Chapbooks gradually stopped being sold in the mid-19th century because of competition from cheap newspapers and, especially in Scotland, from groups that believed they promoted bad behavior.
Chapbooks were usually sold to people who did not own libraries. Because they were made of weak materials, few survive today. In a time when paper was expensive, chapbooks were sometimes reused for wrapping, baking, or as toilet paper. Many surviving chapbooks come from the collection of Samuel Pepys, who gathered them between 1661 and 1688. These are now kept at Magdalene College, Cambridge. The historian Anthony Wood collected 65 chapbooks, including 20 from before 1660, which are now in the Bodleian Library. Important Scottish collections are also held by the University of Glasgow and the National Library of Scotland.
Today, collectors like Peter Opie study chapbooks mainly for research purposes. Small literary publishers, such as Louffa Press, Black Lawrence Press, and Ugly Duckling Presse, still print chapbooks yearly. These modern versions use updated methods and materials, often made with high-quality techniques like letterpress printing.
Production and distribution
Chapbooks were inexpensive books without known authors that were commonly read by people of lower social classes who could not afford regular books. Wealthy individuals sometimes owned chapbooks and occasionally covered them with leather. Printers usually created chapbooks to match the interests of the general public. These books were typically between four and twenty-four pages long and printed on rough paper with simple, often reused woodcut images. Millions of chapbooks were sold each year. After 1696, English sellers of chapbooks needed official permission, and 2,500 were approved, with 500 in London alone. In France, 3,500 licensed sellers of chapbooks existed by 1848, and they sold 40 million books yearly.
London was the main center for making chapbooks and ballads, and printers were located near London Bridge until the Great Fire of London in 1666. However, the growth of chapbooks also included many printers in other regions, especially in Scotland and Newcastle upon Tyne. The first Scottish chapbook was the story of Tom Thumb, published in 1682.
Content
Chapbooks were an important way to share popular culture with common people, especially in rural areas. They provided both entertainment and information. Although some people criticized chapbooks for having simple stories with repeated elements and focusing on adventure through short, story-like formats, they are still valued as records of popular culture, preserving traditions that might not survive elsewhere.
Chapbooks were sold to workers, though they were not only bought by them. Broadside ballads cost about half a penny or a few pence. Chapbooks ranged in price from 2 to 6 pennies, while agricultural workers earned about 12 pennies a day. In England during the 1640s, about 30% of men could read, and this number increased to 60% by the mid-1700s. Many working people read, and their daily routines allowed time for reading.
Chapbooks were read aloud to families or groups in alehouses. They helped improve literacy, and some people who were self-taught used them. In the 1660s, about 400,000 almanacs were printed each year, enough for one in three families in England. A 17th-century London publisher had one book for every 15 families in the country. In the 1520s, a bookseller in Oxford sold up to 190 ballads a day for half a penny each. In 1664, a London bookseller had enough books and paper to make about 90,000 chapbooks and 37,500 ballads. This amount was not unusual in the trade. In 1707, another London bookseller had 31,000 books and 257 reams of printed paper. A rough estimate of chapbook sales in Scotland alone in the second half of the 18th century was over 200,000 per year.
Printers gave chapmen chapbooks on credit, who then sold them door-to-door and at markets and fairs, paying the printers later. This method helped chapbooks reach many people with little cost and allowed printers to learn which books were popular. Popular stories were printed again, copied without permission, edited, and released in new versions.
Publishers also made catalogs, and chapbooks were kept in the libraries of farmers and landowners. In the 1680s, a Quaker farmer in Somerset had books sent to him from London by a carrier.
Samuel Pepys collected ballads and grouped them into categories that matched the themes of many chapbooks.
Many stories in chapbooks were based on older tales. For example, Bevis of Hampton was a romance from the 13th century, and The Seven Sages of Rome came from the East and was used by Geoffrey Chaucer. Some stories about greedy or ignorant clergy in chapbooks were taken from a book printed around 1500 and another from 1557.
Stories set in a mythical or magical past were popular, while important historical figures and events were rarely included. In Pepys' collection, Charles I and Oliver Cromwell did not appear as historical figures, and the Wars of the Roses and the English Civil War were not mentioned. Elizabeth I appeared only once, and Henry VIII and Henry II were shown in disguise, helping poor workers and rewarding them. Stories often featured heroes from noble families who overcame hardship through bravery, such as Saint George, Guy of Warwick, and Robin Hood. Other stories followed people of low birth who rose to fame through strength, like Clim of Clough and William of Cloudesley. Clergy were often portrayed as foolish, and silly countrymen were also common characters, such as in The Wise Men of Gotham. Some stories were aimed at local audiences, like The Country Mouse and the Town Mouse.
Starting in 1597, books were made for specific jobs, such as cloth merchants, weavers, and shoemakers. Weavers, for example, were often literate. Thomas Deloney, a weaver, wrote Thomas of Reading, which followed six clothiers traveling together. In Jack of Newbury, an apprentice takes over a weaver’s business after his death, marries the weaver’s widow, and later helps the poor, refusing a knighthood despite his service to the king.
Other examples from Pepys’ collection include The Countryman's Counsellor, or Everyman his own Lawyer and Sports and Pastimes, which taught schoolboys tricks like making roses from paper or performing magic.
Local heroes were popular in the provinces and Scotland. Robert Burns said one of the first books he read privately was the story of Sir William Wallace, which influenced his love for Scotland.
Influence
Chapbooks had a wide and lasting influence. About 80% of English folk songs collected in the early 1900s were connected to printed broadsides, with over 90 of these songs able to be traced only to broadsides printed before 1700. It has been suggested that most surviving ballads can be traced back to the years 1550–1600 using clues inside the songs themselves.
One of the most popular and influential chapbooks was Richard Johnson's Seven Champions of Christendom (1596), believed to be the source for introducing Saint George into English folk plays.
Robert Greene's 1588 novel Dorastus and Fawnia, which became the basis for Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale, was still being sold in inexpensive editions in the 1680s. Some stories, such as Jack of Newbury, Friar Bacon, Dr. Faustus, and The Seven Champions of Christendom, were still being published in the 19th century.
Later production
A chapbook is a type of small book, usually containing poetry, that is often bound with a method called saddle stitching. Some chapbooks are also perfect bound, folded, or wrapped. These books can be simple and inexpensive or carefully made by hand, with some selling for hundreds of dollars. In recent years, chapbooks that include fiction or non-fiction stories have become more common. In the United Kingdom, these books are often called pamphlets.
Over the past 40 years, the popularity of chapbooks has grown because of new technologies, such as mimeograph machines, low-cost copy centers, and digital printing. Cultural changes caused by zines and poetry slams have also helped chapbooks become more widely used. Poetry slams, in particular, have led to many self-published chapbooks that help fund tours.
The Center for the Humanities at the City University of New York Graduate Center hosts the NYC/CUNY Chapbook Festival, which highlights chapbooks as works of art and as tools for new and alternative writers and publishers. For example, the story "Manual for Cleaning Women" by Lucia Berlin was first published as a chapbook. Later, Berlin included this story in a collection that became a bestseller.