A chapbook is a type of small printed booklet that was popular medium for street literature throughout early modern Europe. Chapbooks were usually produced cheaply, illustrated with crude woodcuts and printed on a single sheet folded into 8, 12, 16, or 24 pages, sometimes bound with a saddle stitch. Printers provided chapbooks on credit to chapmen, who sold them both from door to door and at markets and fairs, then paying for the stock they sold. The tradition of chapbooks emerged during the 16th century as printed books were becoming affordable, with the medium ultimately reaching its height of popularity during the 17th and 18th centuries. Different ephemera and popular or folk literature were published as chapbooks, such as almanacs, children's literature, folklore, ballads, nursery rhymes, pamphlets, poetry, and political and religious tracts. The term chapbook remains in use by publishers to refer to short, inexpensive booklets.
Benjamin Tasker Sr. was the 21st Proprietary Governor of Maryland from 1752 to 1753. He also occupied a number of other significant colonial offices, including, on various occasions, being elected Mayor of Annapolis.
Berrow's Worcester Journal is a weekly freesheet tabloid newspaper, based in Worcester, England. Owned by Newsquest, the newspaper is delivered across central and southern Worcestershire.
Daffy's Elixir is a name that has been used by several patent medicines over the years. It was originally designed for diseases of the stomach, but was later marketed as a universal cure. It remained a popular remedy in Britain and later the United States of America throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
Thomas Raikes was a British merchant particularly trading from London with Russia, a banker and newspaper proprietor. Notably, he was Governor of the Bank of England during the 1797 currency crisis, when the Bank was prohibited by the British Government from paying out in gold.
Robert Raikes the Elder was a British printer and newspaper proprietor. He is noted as a pioneer of the press who was instrumental in bringing printing out of London and to the provinces.
Edward Allde was an English printer in London during the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras. He was responsible for a number of significant texts in English Renaissance drama, including some of the early editions of plays by William Shakespeare.
"King John and the Bishop" is an English folk-song dating back at least to the 16th century. It is catalogued in Child Ballads as number 45 and Roud Folk Song Index 302.
William Kiffin (1616–1701), sometimes spelled William Kiffen, was a seventeenth-century English Baptist minister. He was also a successful merchant in the woollen trade.
Dick Whittington and His Cat is the English folklore surrounding the real-life Richard Whittington, wealthy merchant and later Lord Mayor of London. The legend describes his rise from poverty-stricken childhood with the fortune he made through the sale of his cat to a rat-infested country. However, the real Whittington did not come from a poor family of common stock, and there is no compelling evidence supporting the stories about the cat, or even whether he owned one.
James Simmons was a newspaper proprietor, bookseller, banker and business entrepreneur. He was a politician who was active in local government in Canterbury and sat in the House of Commons from 1806 to 1807.
John Marshall (1756–1824) was a London publisher who specialized in children's literature, chapbooks, educational games and teaching schemes. He called himself the "Children's Printer" and children his "young friends". He was pre-eminent in England as a children's book publisher from about 1780 to 1800. After 1795, he became the publisher of Hannah More's Cheap Repository Tracts, but a dispute with her led to him issuing a similar series of his own. About 1800 Marshall began publishing a series of miniature libraries, games and picture books for children. After his death in July 1824, his business was continued either by his widow or his unmarried daughter, both of whom were named Eleanor.
William Parks was an 18th-century printer and journalist in England and Colonial America. He was the first printer in Maryland authorized as the official printer for the colonial government. He published the first newspaper in the Southern American colonies, the Maryland Gazette. He later became authorized as the official printer for the colonial government of Virginia. Parks was also the publisher and printer of the first official collection of the authentic 1733 set of Virginia's laws, and the first colonial publisher and proprietor of The Virginia Gazette newspaper. During his lifetime Parks established four new newspapers in the colonies. He also worked with Benjamin Franklin on several projects related to printing, most notably, the establishment of a paper mill in Virginia, the first such mill south of Pennsylvania.
Francis Newbery was an English publisher and businessman.
Henry Lemoine (1756–1812) was an English author and bookseller.
The Gloucester Journal was a newspaper in Gloucester founded by Robert Raikes the Elder and William Dicey in 1722. Later on, when newspaper was shut down, Gloucester Journal started publishing stories in the form of articles online on their website.
The Northampton Mercury was an English news and media company founded in 1720. Published in Northampton, it was sold throughout the midlands, as far west as Worcester and as far east as Cambridge. When it ceased publication in 2015, it was the oldest continuously published newspaper in the U.K.
Cluer Dicey was an English newspaper proprietor, publisher of street literature, printseller and patent medicine seller, in London and later in Northampton. He was also proprietor of the Northampton Mercury newspaper from 1756 until his death in October 1775. Likewise he inherited and developed a huge distribution network in England for patent medicines.
Dr Bateman's Pectoral Drops was a popular patent medicine for disorders of the chest or lungs during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries in Britain and North America. It was later marketed as a remedy for ‘all Rheumatic and Chronic complaints, in pains of the limbs, bones, and joints, for influenza, and in violent colds,.
Richard Marshall was responsible for co-running, and then independently running the Dicey print publishing business in London, which existed during the middle decades of the eighteenth century. Initially, this was run by Cluer Dicey (1715–1775) alone, yet in 1753 Marshall purchased a quarter of the business, and in 1764 he became an equal partner. After the death of Dicey in 1775, he became the sole owner. When Marshall began working in 1753, the business operated from Aldermary Churchyard, London, where it remained until his death.