The chapbook legacy
My interest in chapbooks was sparked by finding a book published by Andrew White Tuer (Field & Tuer Press) of Joseph Crawhall's ingenious Izaak Walton: His Wallet Booke; a book in the faintly guise of a fisherman's 'wallet' complete with pockets sewn into the endpapers labeled to hold fishing flies, tobacco and other essentials. Crawhall's woodcuts mimic the crude printing of the popular chapbook which, by then, were quickly vanishing due to advances in print technology.
This was the first article I submitted to Parenthesis. It appeared in the North American edition which, at that time, was edited by Robert McCamant – the last NA editor who was also a practicing fine press printer. It was only after this was published that I dared to approach the venerable editor of the UK/European Parenthesis, Sebastian Carter.
In London, January 1913, a small publishing enterprise, called ‘The Sign of the Flying Fame,’ was set up by three friends for the purpose of producing modest little booklets of poetry and verse. They would be designed and illustrated by Claud Lovat Fraser in a manner reminiscent of the early 19th-century chapbook. Ralph Hodgson was the poet and Holbrook Jackson would provide the prose. Although printed in limited editions (entrusted to a commercial printer) and the illustrations hand-coloured, they were affordably priced. Lovat, as his friends called him, aimed to make contemporary writing accessible to as wide an audience as possible.
Lovat’s little booklets pay homage to the early Victorian jobbing printer and, in particular, the chapbook; cheap, commonplace little booklets, usually consisting of a single sheet printed on both sides, folded into 8, 12, 16 or 24 pages, and sold untrimmed and unbound. Chapbooks would often include an elemental woodcut illustration, which, for an additional halfpenny, could be bought in a hand-coloured version. Even the most cursory inspection will confirm that chapbooks were hurriedly printed with little care or concern for standards of craftsmanship. But, in fact, it was this lack of artifice (or, to be clear, the execrable printing onto dire paper, with illustrations worse than the paper and presswork combined) that was the chapbook’s key attraction to Lovat.
The democratic nature of the chapbook — uncomplicated in its making, cheap, and sold at your door or at the end of your street — offered a distinct and familiar presence many considered in danger of being stifled by industrial mechanization and mass production. The subject matter could range from an abridged version of The Canterbury Tales, lewd stories of debauchery, accounts of battles fought on foreign soil, murderers’ confessions, shipping and mining disasters, to transcriptions of religious tracts and hymns. There were even chapbooks containing information about country roads, town maps, and fairs. Indeed, chapbooks were an amalgamation of any literature that might attract and entertain sufficiently to turn a profit for the publisher.
The chapbook had its origins in the 17th century; it was a natural progression from the common broadsheet (a single sheet printed on both sides) used for official notices and proclamations. Printers discovered that profit could be made from the printing of popular ballads and it was a simple task to adjust the design of a broadsheet to incorporate folds. Enid Marx, in English Popular Art, described chapbooks as ‘…very crude productions, both in style and execution, roughly printed in heavy blackletter and the woodcut often coarsely done. Nevertheless, for all their lack of skill, [chapbooks] have at their best, great charm, with a force, directness and freedom reminiscent of primitive paintings. They follow the same spirit as the humours and grotesqueries of gothic carving in pew-ends, gargoyles, misereres and the like, and are full of exuberant fantasy.’
Lovat had a particular fondness for the chapbooks of James Catnach, originally from Berwick on Tweed, who set up a jobbing print shop in Seven Dials, London, in 1813. He started wit just his father’s wooden printing press, and gradually built a very lucrative business writing, editing, and printing chapbooks and broadsides (a single sheet printed on one side only).
His chapbooks combined bold illustrations with texts and ornaments printed with a little more care than most, on paper that, although thin, was relatively smooth and received ink well. Nevertheless, Catnach, like his fellow jobbing printers, had a rebellious reputation within the broader print fraternity for printing vulgar material in a vulgar manner. Standards of craftsmanship were certainly lax, but it is easy to imagine that for Catnach, being ostracised by the Printer’s Guild might be considered a badge of honour—it was certainly not an impediment. The reported quantities printed are astonishing. For example: Catnach sold more than two and half million broadsides relating to the execution of two notorious characters in 1849—a remarkable number, especially at a time when the population of England was less than 20 million. It was the establishment of a mass market for printed material without resorting to mass production methods that gave the chapbook the reputation for being ‘the stuff of 19th-century life.’
The popularity of the chapbook was not confined to the English-speaking world; many countries had their own form of this kind of popular literature. It is not surprising, therefore, that with minor adjustments to suit national nuances, the chapbook became a vehicle for the popularizing of international folklore. But the most valued effect of the chapbook surely lies in the simple fact that it demonstrated to everyone, regardless of class, the value of reading. Fortunately, when sales of traditional chapbooks first began to falter, an eager new readership was on the increase. The Victorians are credited with ‘inventing childhood’ by their effort to halt child labour and the introduction of compulsory education. Similarly, jobbing printers were quick to see the potential of a new market and, as a result, the amount of literature for children, much of it in the chapbook style, grew as the century progressed. Content tended to concentrate on essential lessons and basic morals – entertainment, in the form of puzzles and games, arrived later.
The slow decline of the chapbook was caused: first, by the passing of a law in 1839 banning hawking on the streets; improved technologies making books more affordable, which, in turn, led to the rise of the ‘popular novel’; and, most significantly, the lifting of the newspaper tax in 1855 which enabled the creation of ‘penny dailies.’ But the nostalgia for childhood memories meant that the chapbook remained in high esteem, and in the brief period between their virtual demise and their ‘rediscovery’ as icons of a ‘by-gone age’ in the 1880s, their slipshod printing had become ‘characterful,’ typographic naivety was now ‘quaint,’ and the roughly hewn woodcut illustrations—despite their common depiction of poverty and cruelty— were transformed into a celebration of a more innocent, even carefree idyll of pre-industrial rural life.
Lovat’s devotion to these simple little books, and especially to the modest everyday rural narratives they often portrayed, was all-consuming. He would write that his ultimate ambition was to be ‘National artist of England, such love do I bear for its hedges and ditches.’ Lovat was not alone in his admiration of chapbooks. In fact, his initial interest had been prompted by his friend Edward Gordon Craig, who had established his own small press, The Sign of the Rose, in 1898. Craig, in turn, had been deeply influenced by the poster work of James Pryde and William Nicholson, otherwise known as The Beggarstaff Brothers and by whom Craig was taught the craft of wood-cutting. Later, Craig would provide wood-cut illustrations for the Cranach Press’ Hamlet.
But the single most important figure, and the person whose work acted effectively as a conduit for the art of the chapbook (and hugely admired by Lovat, Craig and the Beggarstaffs) was the wood-engraver, prose-writer, and publisher Joseph Crawhall (1821–1896). Crawhall was also a businessman, patron of the arts, campaigner for the preservation of architecture, collaborator with Punch magazine’s Charles Keene, and a collector of antiquities—the family having accumulated a sizable fortune through various business interests. Fully absorbed in the life of a thriving and productive Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Crawhall made a significant contribution in every area of interest that he pursued. But there is no doubt that, above all, chapbooks (Newcastle being a major centre for chapbook publication) remained his passion.
Crawhall had been writing, illustrating, and printing broadsides and booklets dedicated to the life and leisure pursuits of the agricultural worker since his 20s. These early books already demonstrate his fascination with rural folklore, and although he was initially influenced by fellow Northumbrian and wood-engraver Thomas Bewick (Crawhall had close ties to the Bewick family) his overriding interest in the coarse illustrations and printing of chapbooks was apparent from the beginning. The books he edited, illustrated, and published were printed in small editions. They were intended, in the main, to entertain friends and family only. But, in the 1880s, Crawhall began a brief but highly productive collaboration with another enterprising Victorian, the London printer Andrew White Tuer, of the Field & Tuer and then the Leadenhall presses. Like Crawhall, Tuer was a contributor to Punch and, more importantly, a serious print historian with a particular interest in the chapbook. In 1882 Crawhall and Tuer were corresponding and between 1883 and 1885 they published several remarkable books dedicated to popular ballads and verses recorded in chapbooks. The most distinctive of these was also the final complete book they collaborated on: Izaak Walton: His Wallet Booke, published 1885.
While Crawhall’s woodcut illustrations encapsulate the spirit of the chapbook, their general appearance is darker, and far heavier than anything of equivalent size to be found in a chapbook. Something closer to Crawhall’s style can be found when smaller (and therefore cruder) chapbook illustrations are examined at close quarters. It seems likely that Crawhall, who would have used a magnifying glass to study his fine print collection, also found it entertaining to study the effects of bad printing in his chapbook collection. Over-inking, too much pressure, and the use of worn or damaged wood blocks and type are all common faults in the letterpress printing of chapbooks. The cover of Izaak Walton: His Wallet Booke is given over entirely to Crawhall’s depiction of miscreant letterforms, but here they are gilt-stamped onto vellum as if to emphasize that the result is precisely what this printer intended. The words ‘Izaak Walton’ are the result of an equally close examination, but this time of Crawhall’s own handwriting using a quill or reed pen.
The pages of all the Crawhall books printed and published by Tuer contain large initials and illustrations printed from woodblocks cut by Crawhall, and accompanied by several lines of text, often set in Caslon. These elements are positioned on the page with the utmost care to provide a comforting, but paradoxically, carefree appearance. Despite the apparent naivety of the individual elements, the generous amount of white space makes it clear that Crawhall’s intention is to celebrate rather than merely appropriate the earthy humour and vulgar mannerisms of the chapbook. Credit for overall design should be attributed to Crawhall (earlier self-published projects of his are similar in appearance), although Tuer’s printing provides a particularly deep and even blackness that was uncommon at the time. This, and the fact that Tuer printed many of these books in several formats and as ‘limited editions,’ had led some to consider Tuer a precursor of the self-styled ‘Artistic Publishers’ (also called the ‘Aesthetes’ or ‘Decadents’) of the 1890s such as John Lane and Elkin Mathews (Bodley Head); Joseph M. Dent (Temple Press); William Heinemann; Grant Richards; and Leonard Smithers. Theodore L De Vinne went so far as to say that ‘Tuer justly may be considered as the real beginning of the revival of bold and black printing, which was afterwards developed on other lines by William Morris and his disciples.’
Tuer’s sympathy for the Arts and Crafts movement and his interest in printing history caused him to correspond with John Ruskin and William Morris, although their recorded responses are generally rather brusque. It is certainly the case that the faint air of protest contained in the Crawhall and Tuer books was entirely eclipsed by the arrival of Morris’s mighty Kelmscott Press. With his first book The Story of the Glittering Plain in 1891, Morris provided supporters of the ‘revival of fine printing’ with a tour de force that left ‘curious’ books such as Izaak Walton: His Wallet Booke instantly diminished in its substantial wake.
There remained, however, more than a residue of interest in the popular form of print culture represented by the chapbook. While Edward Gordon Craig’s friendship with the Beggarstaff Brothers linked him with Crawhall and the original chapbooks, it is likely that the initial impetus to publish his first journal, The Page, in 1899, came from North America where a new phenomenon—indeed ‘a flood’— of ‘little magazines’ had appeared during the 1890s. (Craig’s mother, the famed actress Ellen Terry, had bought him the first volume set of Thomas Mosher’s The Germ in 1895.) Such magazines were indeed small, in format but also in their number of pages—between 16 and 32 was typical. They contained little or no advertising, and were generally printed on handmade, or imitation handmade, paper with their deckle edges retained. In their basic physical aspects, American little magazines were reminiscent of chapbooks and, indeed, the title of the most influential of these was The Chap-Book, published, for the most part, in Chicago between 1894 and 1898. Initially intended to act as a promotional vehicle for Stone and Kimball’s ‘fine print’ book publishing enterprise, The Chap-Book quickly became the company’s most popular publication.
Not surprisingly, the existence of British and European chapbooks was little known in America outside printing history circles, and the title, The Chap-Book, together with its somewhat archaic appearance and feel, placed it firmly within the refined world of antiquarians and collectors of print ephemera. These physical characteristics also distinguished The Chap-Book – and the many hundreds of other ‘little magazines’ published during the 1890s from the larger, glossier mainstream journals. However, the printed design of these publications bore little relation to the original chapbooks. Instead, they seemed more to resemble Morris’ Kelmscott Press work or, increasingly, the Artistic or Aesthetic style of British journals such as the Yellow Book and Savoy with their swirling illustrations and ornament, lighter type and generous margins. And yet, something of the egalitarian nature of chapbooks is reflected in the editorial mix of popular and high culture, with contributions from renowned American and European figures including Henry James, Paul Verlaine, Stéphane Mallarmé, Aubrey Beardsley, and Max Beerbohm. The American fine printer Earnest Elmo Calkins described The Chap-Book as being ‘… an inspiration … No younger man can fully appreciate the impact of that simple and casual little magazine on a world of stodgy and commonplace printing.’
One of the most significant figures to emerge from the little magazine movement was Will H. Bradley. Indeed, Bradley was at its very epicenter, his prodigious output was such that when he published his own little magazine he could call it simply Bradley His Book. From the start, his versatility seemed boundless, working as a poster and book designer, typographer, illustrator, editor, and printer. Bradley was largely self-taught and gained much of his knowledge in public libraries. In Chicago, where the library was already establishing a Kelmscott collection, he studied the work of William Morris, Walter Crane, and Edward Burne-Jones. Aubrey Beardsley would also become a major influence. Inspired by The Chap-Book, Bradley moved to Springfield, Massachusetts, to set up his Wayside Press in 1894, primarily to design and print Bradley His Book. This was also when he discovered the collection of chapbooks held by the Boston Public Library. At some point during the next three years he must also have found the work of Joseph Crawhall, because there are many examples emanating from his Wayside Press, for instance, that echo the Crawhall style.
Crawhall’s work, and the chapbooks that had inspired him, clearly made a lasting impression on Bradley, and their harsh woodcut style would thereafter appear on a regular basis. However, Bradley’s most conspicuous celebrations of the ‘chapbook’ are the four small booklets published at ‘The Sign of the Vine,’ Concord, Massachusetts – Bradley’s home – and printed by Heintzemann of Boston in 1903. (Due to ill-health, Bradley had merged and then left the Wayside Press with the University Press, Cambridge [Massachusetts] in 1898.) Each of these booklets, intended by Bradley as self-promotional gifts, consisted of 12 pages sewn into cream paper-covered boards and, in authentic chapbook style, left untrimmed. Even their content is reminiscent of the original chapbooks, The Leather Bottel for example, being the words to an old English drinking song. The following year, the American Type Founders Company, almost certainly having seen Bradley’s ‘Sign of the Vine’ publications, commissioned him to write and design a set of twelve booklets to be published monthly. Bradley chose a similar format, called collectively The American Chap-Book and festooned each booklet with small, decorative black-and-white illustrations that bear a remarkable resemblance to Crawhall’s own idiosyncratic style. Each issue of The American Chap-Book had a different topic, for example: ‘Business Cards’ and ‘Advertising Display,’ and served not only to promote the wares of ATF, but also acted as a training aid for American printers.
Bradley’s work was lauded on both sides of the Atlantic, and it is certain that a young Lovat would have been aware of Bradley’s reputation. But Lovat’s search for the peculiarly English character had an energy and momentum very much its own. Nor was he alone in this: traditional music, dance and rural crafts all had similar revivals at this time, given added poignancy by the approach of the First World War. Yet from around 1918, the legacy of the chapbook quickly waned. ‘The past’, it was now claimed, had become a cliché. In 1921 Bradley became immersed within the Hearst publishing empire as its art director, and in 1928 he retired. Lovat died in 1921, at age 30, the result in part, it has been speculated, of injuries received during service in the First World War. Lovat’s passion for the popular arts was, however, sustained by a group of his young admirers, which included Edward Bawden, Enid Marx, and Eric Ravilious.
The revival of interest in the chapbook during the 1890s and the start of the 20th century was explained by Holbrook Jackson in Aesthetics of Printing (1939): ‘Revivals in art attempt to restore vitality by throwing back to periods when design and production had primitive vigour.’ Initially, the chapbook offered a cushion against the worst consequences of the Industrial Revolution, and later a demonstration of the implicit and democratic power of print. But after the First World War a new and more confident generation of print revivalists aimed at embracing new print technology while maintaining knowledge and qualities of craftsmanship in book design and production. As a consequence, interest in the chapbook dissipated. The next call for ‘primitive vigour’ came in the mid-1950s, rekindling interest in the chapbook and resulting in a second wave of American ‘little magazines.’ But that is another story.