University of Glasgow

UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

 
Part of the Library and University Services

Chapbooks

image displayed shows woodcut from "The History of the Sleeping Beauty" (Sp Coll RB 2499/19)

Although there is not one dedicated collection of chapbooks, over 1,000 examples of the genre may be found throughout the collections. The Wylie collection, for example, is a rich source for chapbooks of Scottish interest. The main recreational reading matter of the poor in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, these ephemeral booklets are incredibly diverse in subject matter and contain everything from the popular songs of the day to weird and wonderful accounts of meetings with mermaids.

 

Finding aids and descriptions

  • browse through a list of titles, found by searching the catalogue under subject chap books
  • search the Scottish Chapbooks Catalogue: it records chapbooks published in Scotland with full details of their contents. The first phase, supported by funds from the British Academy, covered some 1,800 chapbooks held by Glasgow University Library. The second phase of the project, incorporating the holdings of other Scottish repositories, is now underway with support from the National Library of Scotland and the Full Disclosure programme of the British Library. More details will be posted here as further records are added.