Chapbooks and Pocket Books - An Introduction

Good news - I am now a Graduate Teaching Assistant at the University of Glasgow! This semester I'm helping to teach "Texts for Children" and we had our first class on Tuesday. To open, we discussed the history of picture books. The very first ones were actually called Chapbooks. And while I've read lots about them and even seen photographs, I'd never seen one in person and so didn't have that tangible experience of what they felt like. So, off I trotted to the Special Collections Department at the University of Glasgow library to get a closer look. Chapbooks were tiny publications made possible by the proliferation of the printing press, and they contained tiny engravings alongside condensed versions of fairy tales and folk tales. They were sold by street vendors for very cheap, and were not of a very high quality. As such, the fragile pages have been placed between the pages of larger blank books for archiving. They're truly lovely.
However, because they are so fragile, I have yet to hold an actual chapbook, on its own, in my hand. I'll have to do more investigating as I believe these chapbooks are somewhat along the same lines as the modern-day zeen. Anyone know?
     It was a bit tricky looking these up in the archives without knowing exactly what I was looking for, but somehow, I hit the jackpot in asking for Lumden's Toy Books. Shortly after Chapbooks came into being, John Newbery made his mark with pocket books. These were wee books that were a little higher quality with lovely illustrations and longer stories. I found this wonderful collection, a mini-library that was typical of what a child of the time would own. The case held a collection of these Pocket Books. They were cute, colorful, and an enormous hit with young readers. Newbery even had the brilliant idea of offering giveaways with the books - a ball for boys and a pincushion for girls. Each had a red and black side. Parents were encouraged to put a pin into the red side for a child's every good behavior and a pin into the black for every bad behavior. When ten pins were on either side, a child was to be rewarded or punished accordingly. (Sounds a bit like today's Elf on the Shelf.) The books were indeed charming. Here are the treasures stored in this one collection. Aren't they marvelous? I'll go into more detail about these precious treasures in some future posts, so stick around!

To read more about Glasgow's collection of Chapbooks, visit https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/specialcollections/collectionsa-z/chapbooks/. Read more about the Toy Books in particular at http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/exhibns/month/may2008.html.