chapbook_history_yumpu

Chapbooks
A Brief History
1

San Paper
Being a brief history of chapbooks,
pamphlets, and related ephemera.
San Paper and Layabout Books
Bangkok and Chiangmai
Created in MS Publisher
Print Version HP Inkjet
https://www.sansap.com
san2paper@gmail.com
Steve Mongkut
2019
2

Chapbooks
What is a chapbook?
Contemporary chapbooks are often short
collections of poetry or other creative
writing. They may call themselves zines or
simply booklets. Although there is no
standard size, chapbooks tend to be in
roughly A6 format (14.8x10.5 cms) and
contain 16 or 24 or 32 pages held together
with a pamphlet stitch or staples. They are
artsy and have graphic designer covers.
Collectible ephemera? They have a long
history.
3

San Paper
What was a chapman?
Old English céapmann was the regular term
for a dealer or seller, cognate with the Dutch
koopman which has the same meaning.
Old English céap meant deal, barter,
business. The modern adjective cheap is a
comparatively recent development from the
phrase a good cheap, literally a good deal or
bargain (cf. modern Dutch goedkoop =
cheap). The word also appears in names
such as Cheapside, Eastcheap and
Chepstow - all markets or dealing places.
The name of the Danish capital Copenhagen
has a similar origin, being derived from
Køpmannæhafn, meaning merchants’
harbour or buyers’ haven.
4

Chapbooks
By 1600, the word chapman had come to
mean an itinerant dealer or peddler, but it
remained in use for customer and buyer as
well as merchant in the 17th and 18th
centuries. The slang term for man, chap,
arose from the use of the abbreviated word
to mean a hawker or one with whom to
bargain. "If you want to buy, I'm your chap"
5

San Paper
The name applied to dealers of chapbooks,
broadside ballads, and similar items. Their
stock in trade provides an insight into the
methods of political and religious
campaigners during the English Civil War
period, – and here we run into another
question: are pamphlets, together with
tracts, rumplets and bumphlets, the
equivalent of chapbooks? No … not exactly.
Chapman is also a common personal name;
it is one of the class of names derived from
trades and is more respectable than peddler
or tinker.
An instance of the use of the term is found
in the opening lines of the poem Tam o'
Shanter by Robert Burns:
Whan chapman billies leave the street
And drouthy neibours neibours meet...
6

Chapbooks
In France, chapmen were colporteurs and
needed a licence to sell bibliothèque bleue.
The German name for a chapbook is
perhaps the simplest and clearest –
Volksbuch or People’s Book. How many of
these small books appeared in print?
Who knows? Thousands … tens of
thousands?
7

San Paper
And a further question is—how many
people could read and write in the 17th
century? Chapbooks were often read aloud
and served to encourage and promote
literacy. There was a Register of Printers
who inflamed the populace with tracts and
pamphlets; as a consequence, the number of
Master Printers became subject to state
control and censorship.
8

Chapbooks
Pamphlets
Panflets or pamphlets are older than
chapbooks and were originally written by
hand on a single sheet of folded paper. In
the fourteenth century, rag paper became a
fairly common commodity – though not
good cheap. Pamphlets advanced literacy
among the working population and could
be about anything and everything (hence
the pan- prefix). They aimed to please as
amusements or merryments and displayed
one woodcut graphic or ornament on the
front page. They did not have separate
covers. The woodcuts often bore no relation
to the contents of the chapbook
9

San Paper
Chapbooks arose with the spread of
printing after 1450. They were always
printed and not hand-written. Chapmen
sold them for a penny or less at fairs and in
the streets. They were in black and white,
unless coloured by hand.
These illustrations, from the early 19th
century, are painted in water colours.
10

Chapbooks
What reading matter appeared
in chapbooks?
Samuel Pepys, the diarist, collected ballads
in chapbook and broadside format. His
classification of popular works covered
most subjects likely to be read by or read
aloud to common folk:
Devotion and Morality; History – true
and fabulous; Tragedy: viz. Murders,
executions, and judgments of God; State
and Times; Love – pleasant; Ditto –
unpleasant; Marriage, Cuckoldry, et cet; Sea
– love, gallantry & actions; Drinking and
good fellowship; Humour, frollicks and
mixt.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chapbook
11

San Paper
There was an audience for Blood and
Thunder and the grotesque before the rise
of Penny Dreadfuls in the 19th century.
12

Chapbooks
Penny Plain, Two-pence
Coloured
By the early 19th century, chapbooks
appeared in colour—and gave rise to the
saying above. The illustrations were handcoloured,
largely by orphan children.
13

San Paper
Related Publications
The broadside or broadsheet, mentioned
above, was a single larger sheet of paper
which was printed on one side only. This
might be a poster or newspaper, or a ballad
sheet.
The mass production of paper and the
mechanization of printing gave rise to other,
longer penny publications—the most
memorable being the Penny Blood or Penny
Dreadful: Varney the
Vampire. Sweeney Todd.
Springheel Jack etc. These
were fictions which
entered urban legend.
14

Chapbooks
The 19th Century Arts and Crafts
movement attempted a revival of the
chapbook as a modern medieval goody, but
it paled against the comic and later the
graphic novel. The most fashionable
contemporary form is the Japanese anime
and manga, as well as the arty zine.
15

San Paper
In 1982, Stephen King sent out chapbooks
instead of Christmas cards. The contents
were the first chapter of his latest work.
Stephen King claimed to be the first author
to write a novel on a word processor, as
Mark Twain had claimed to be the first to
use a typewriter for The Adventures of Tom
Sawyer in 1876.
The high quality of home printers allows
anyone to create their own chapbook on a
computer. San Paper and Layabout Books
offers advice on making your own book.
Steve Mongkut
san2paper@gmail.com
16