Portraits of Society: Popular Literature in the Seventeenth Century

It was not until the nineteenth century that the little books sold by pedlars at markets and fairs, and indeed, from door to door, became known as 'chapbooks' after the 'chapmen' who sold them. By that time, however, these little books already had a history going back three centuries. They were produced, initially as sidelines, by the same specialist London printers who produced broadside ballads. The earliest known example of a pedlar trading in them comes from 1578, when a man selling 'lytle books' was working in Cambridgeshire. The earliest survivals are also sixteenth century.