page_title: Street literature
section_title: Chapbook
hierarchical_section_title: Street literature / Chapbook
caption_attribution_description: English: An example of a chapbook history
context_page_description: Street literature is any of several different types of publication sold on the streets, at fairs and other public gatherings, by travelling hawkers, pedlars or chapmen, from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Robert Collison's account of the subject describes street literature as the "forerunner of the popular press".
  Leslie Shepard's "History of Street Literature" identifies a range of different publications as indicated by his subtitle: "The Story of Broadside Ballads, Chapbooks, Proclamations, News-Sheets, Election Bills, Tracts, Pamphlets, Cocks, Catchpennies, and Other Ephemera". Street literature therefore includes several different printed formats and publication types.
  The main formats are:
context_section_description: Chapbooks were small, paper-covered booklets, usually printed on a single sheet and folded into books of 8, 12, 16 or 24 pages, either stitched or unstitched. There are several sub-categories of chapbook, notably:
  Histories - 12 or 24- page booklets containing popular accounts of historical figures, traditional tales, fairy stories etc.
  Patters - 8 or 16-page publications containing simple religious texts, humorous or sensational stories such as accounts of murders or natural disaster. Sold by a patterer, which was ‘a noisy talkative street hawker of songs, last dying speeches, &c.’.
  Collections - 8 or 16-page publications containing collections of the lyrics of popular songs.
caption: An example of a chapbook history
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