Alphabe Thursday … C is for Chapbook

Chapbooks or penny histories as they were sometimes called formed an important element of printed popular literature of the 18th century.  Although they were produced for the adult reader; it was at a time when childrens works were overtly moral and didactic in tone.  It was not surprising that younger readers should be drawn to the attractive little books.  In them could be found abridged versions of accounts and stories of knights and maidens, giants, monsters and fairies which had delighted medieval audiences before. Chapbooks were more exciting than the books they had become used to.

It is not clear where the word Chapbook came from; some say it came from the word ‘cheap’ or from the old English word for trade ‘ceap’

Chapbooks measured 6 inches by 4 inches and had 24 pages; some were much smaller They are unbound and the title page serves as a the wrapper on which was always a woodcut illustration.

They were sold by pedlars, hawkers and other itinerant merchants who were known as chapman.  During this time there were few shops ‘out of town’; so the chapman was the essential link in the distribution to isolated villages and farms.He didn’t only sell books he supplied other small items required in the household such as needles, pins, ribbon and thread.  From the closing of the 17th century an important part of his stock-in-trade was a small bundle of books which he sold for a copper or two.