ABSTRACT
Chapbooks ranged from sixteen to twenty-four pages in length and a penny to sixpence in price, and often included wood-cut pictures of main characters and events. Like ballads, the subject matter ranged from the moral and historical to the romantic and sexual, and it also included a subgenre which recounted the exploits of rogues and villains. The name derived from those who sold them, itinerant dealers or “chapmen,” and they consisted of small pamphlets of tales and tracts as well as ballads. The first pamphlet, A Miraculous and Monstrous but yet Most True and Certain Discourse of a Woman, tells of the mysterious growth of a horn from an apparently honest woman’s forehead. And therefore, when thou shalt read this strange discourse following, do neither discredit it as untrue, for the Woman is ready to be seen and the matter is apparent to the eyes of all men.
