Kramářské tisky jako specifický doklad knižní kultury 18. a 19. století. Fond kramářských tisků Muzea Jindřichohradecka
Authors: Běhalová Štěpánka 
Published: November 2021

This book-science study focuses on chapbooks, the development of research on this specific cultural phenomenon and the related collection activities, presented by the example of the collection of chapbooks housed in the Museum of the Jindřichův Hradec Region. Chapbooks have already been of scientific and collecting interest since the end of the 19th century. Extensive projects have recently been prepared with the aim of processing and providing access to the collections of memory and academic institutions. Bibliologically, a chapbook is defined as a small multi-page print, usually in octavo, duodecimo or sextodecimo (exceptionally trigesimo-secundo) format, which contained a lyric or epic text in poetry or prose with a religious or secular theme, was created with an emphasis on the commercial aspect and was primarily to make profit for the author, the printer (through the use of economical printing methods) as well as the seller (through the number of the printed copies sold).

In 2021, the collection of chapbooks, which is part of the holdings of the Museum of the Jindřichův Hradec Region, contains almost 4,400 inventory numbers. The collection was established in the 1930s, and further large acquisitions were made in the 1990s from the literary estate of the Landfras family of printers from Jindřichův Hradec. The collection is dominated by prints from the Jindřichův Hradec printing works, comprising more than half of the collection; a rather large set is formed by the production of Prague printing workshops (14%); smaller sets come from printing workshops in Vienna, Chrudim and Jihlava. The earliest prints in the collection are Píseň o moci, divích a zázracích sv. Škapulíře [A Song about the Power, Wonders and Miracles of the Holy Scapular] (Hradec Králové 1725) and Dvě písničky nové velmi pěkné o svaté Anně [Two Very Nice New Songs about St Anne] (Příbram 1726). The latest prints come from the 1940s, namely Zásvětná modlitba k Panně Marii [A Dedication Prayer to the Virgin Mary] (Olomouc 1940) and Píseň k sv. Janu Nepomuckému [A Song to St John of Nepomuk] (J. Hradec 1944).

The study deals with the formal and content aspects of chapbooks. A comparison with extant wooden printing blocks from the inheritance of the Landfras printing works has revealed similarities in this printing decoration across printing workshops, but also the production of several apparently identical plates in one or more printing workshops especially in the 19th century. Moreover, the paper presents the changes in the decoration and form of the prints that chiefly occurred in the second half of the 19th century. In decoration, there is a clear connection with other types of printed production: in the area of secular themes with books of popular reading and in that of religious topics mainly with holy pictures, house blessings, memento mori prints and folding holy letters. There were certain analogies in their methods of production and decoration, but they were also distributed together and were among traditional means of personal devotion. The various texts printed in chapbooks (folk, popularised and artificial songs, poetry or prose texts of religious and secular content) can also be found in other printed media – in hymnals, songbooks, prayer books, books of folk reading, as well as theatrical plays, 19th-century almanacs, and periodicals. The chapbooks from the collection under study contain songs as well as other texts mostly related to religious pilgrimage in the 19th century, with the songs in them becoming ever less frequent.

The chapbook production of the long 19th century is represented in the collection by a large number of chapbooks from the Landfras printing works in Jindřichův Hradec. The Landfras family, whose publishing profile emphasised religious and prayer literature primarily for rural population, concentrated the production of chapbooks in this area as well.

The chapbook as a multidisciplinary phenomenon has been the subject of interdisciplinary research since the beginning of the 20th century. It has received the attention of ethnologists, librarians, book scientists and musicologists, as well as curators of collections in memory institutions. Its content and genre, hitherto studied in detail within secular broadside ballads, await evaluation by the new generation of literary scholars and cultural anthropologists in the field of religious chapbooks.