1882 1st ed Chapbooks
Folklore Legends Superstition Medieval Woodcuts Ashton
“the only reading matter for the poorer
classes, provided a fascinating way into the heroes and legends in popular
literature!”
This incredible first edition of John Ashton’s collection of ‘chapbooks’
is illustrated with reproductions of woodcuts, typographical facsimiles, and
figures. The stories in this book depict the lives and work of ‘chapmen’ or
peddlers, shoemakers, millers, martyrs, and other medieval low-society lives.
“Chapbooks were virtually the only reading matter for the poorer classes
and provide for the modern reader a fascinating way into the heroes and
legends, folklore and superstitions that prevailed in the popular literature of
the age.” (Letellier 118)
This book is one of the three
most important works on the study of chapbooks, and is the only one from before
the 20th-century. “John Ashton’s is sometimes eccentric but still
valuable.” (Simons 16). This book “provides over 100 chapbooks and facsimiles
of the original covers and woodcut illustrations” (Letellier 118).
According to the 1882 ‘Annual
Register,’
“Mr. Ashton shows a stratum of the
literature of the time ignored as a rule by those who explore its more
cultivated depths. Throughout the preceding age the chapbooks, or penny books
of 16-24 pages, carried in the pedlar’s pack and hawked about, constituted the
only mental food of the poorer classes. This collection, illustrated by
characteristic woodcuts, contains many of the old stories and legends familiar
to us from our youth as nursery rhymes and fairy tales, as Robin Hood, Reynard
the Fox, Valentine and Orson, while the ignorance and superstition of the poor
were appealed to in diabolical, legendary, and supernatural tales of the most
extraordinary kind.”
Item number: #16177
Price: $499
ASHTON, John
Chap-books of the eighteenth century
London : Chatto and Windus, 1882. First edition.
Details:
· Collation: Complete
with all pages
o xvi, 486, [2]
o Heavily illustrated throughout
· References:
Simons, From Medieval to Medievalism;
Letellier, The English Novel, 1700-1740:
An annotated bibliography.
· Language: English
· Binding:
Hardcover; tight and secure
o
Decorative cloth
· Size: ~7.5in X 5.25in (19.5cm x 13.5cm)
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16177