Poet's Guide to Library Resources: Chapbooks

"Chapbooks can loosely be defined as the small, unbound, paper-covered books that were carried and sold by itinerant peddlers known as 'chapmen.' They were in circulation from the sixteenth century until the early nineteenth...Although the chapbook has been defined rather narrowly at different times throughout history...the term has come to broadly represent a body of work that spans four centuries as well as several distinct and seemingly dissonant literary genres." From, McGill Library.