A History of Guilty Pleasure: Chapbooks and The Lemoines

Chapbooks and the Lemoines 283
A History of Guilty Pleasure: Chapbooks

and the Lemoines
Roy Bearden-White
Minutia, though in themselves triŠing, aôrd pleasure, and are of some im-
portance, when we consider that we are often more aêcted by small and
imperceptible objects, than by such as by their magnitude ingross our whole
attention for a while.1
C hapbooks were small, paper bound books sold by peddlers, itin-

erant salesmen, and chapmen during the eighteenth and early nine-
teenth centuries. They were quickly produced using poor materials and
typically sold for less than a shilling apiece. As the successor to previous
street literature, such as the popular broadsheets, jest-books, and ballads
of the Elizabethan age, the subject matter of these chapbooks varied
greatly. Chapbooks could consist of song lyric compilations, children’s
stories, recipes, ghost stories, legends, and adventure stories. One histo-
rian writing in the nineteenth century noted, “Chapbook literature ca-
tered for the intellectual wants of the lower and middle classes of the
people, and by it the nature of those wants, in other words, the predilec-
tions and the common bent of the popular mind can be accurately
1. Henry Lemoine, “Curiosities in London at the end of the Seventeenth Cen-
tury,” A Selection of Curious Articles from the Gentleman’s Magazine. vol. 1, ed. John
Walker (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Pater-
noster-Row; and Munday and Slatter, Oxford, 1811), 434. This article originally
appeared in the October 1790 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine.
Roy Bearden-White (14439 Corinth Road, Marion, IL 62959) is a Ph.D. student in

English Literature at Southern Illinois University. His primary research interests are in
eighteenth-century British literature, book history, and the history of the novel. He has
recently published an article in the International Journal of Comic Art, which theorizes
ways meaning is gained through reading graphic novels.
PBSA 103:3 (2009): 283–318

284 Bibliographical Society of America
gauged.”2 The “common bent” became a pro‰table source for chapmen
during the eighteenth century as more and more chapbooks were printed.
Chapbooks, also called libels in the seventeenth century, constitute
an important part of our literary history. As Samuel Pepys recounted in
the epitaph to his early chapbook collection:
Though some make slight of Libels; yet you may see by them, how the Wind
sits. As take a straw, and throw it up into the Air; you shall see by that, which
way the Wind is; which you shall not do, by casting up Stone. More Solid things
do not show the Complexion of the Times, so well as Ballads and Libells.3
Chapbooks represented the ideas and the ideals of the lower ranks and
orders. They expressed the interests and the passions that, many times,
diêred with those of the ruling class. They established a historical
record of the everyday life of the common person, a life which the histo-
ry of the upper classes has often overshadowed. Despite this impor-
tance, the academic community has, by and large, relegated these texts
to mere footnote status through an uneven, and undeserved, criticism of
their aesthetic worth while ignoring the greater social contributions of
chapbooks.
From the very beginning, those who stood in a position to evaluate
literature viewed chapbooks with both disdain and distaste. As with
most popular ‰ction, scholars perceived chapbooks as poorly written, if
not outright plagiarized, by hack writers more driven by an interest in
obtaining a quick pro‰t than inspired by any artistic muse. Before the
1970s, the overwhelming majority of literary critics simply discounted
any type of street literature as unworthy of study.
The critical perception of distinctly separate eighteenth-century lit-
erary formats such as periodicals and magazines also contributed to the
harsh judgment of chapbooks. A few canonical authors bridged these
formats and not only wrote chapbooks, but published them as well.
When Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote The Watchman series in 1796, he
published them in the chapbook format. Moreover, the reading public
instantly recognized and identi‰ed Coleridge’s work as a chapbook se-
ries. During the late 1790s, when Sir Alexander Boswell expanded the
chapbook collection started by his father, James Boswell, he included
2. Charles A. Federer, Yorkshire Chap-Books (London: Elliot Stock, 1889), 7.

3. Helen Weinstein, Catalogue of the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cam-
bridge (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 1994), xiii.
several issues of Coleridge’s work.4 Categorizing The Watchman as a chap-
book series, however, seriously challenges the traditional view of eigh-
teenth-century periodicals as somehow diêrent than chapbooks. The
only barrier between such highly regarded periodicals as The Rambler or
The Idler and non‰ction-oriented chapbooks exists within subjective
critical opinion. Artists, like Coleridge, used chapbooks as a means of
social commentary in the same way that Samuel Johnson used his week-
ly periodicals. Chapbook series did indeed diêr from periodicals in the
frequency of issues, though not necessarily in regularity. Even though
publishers typically released chapbook series on a monthly or semi-month-
ly basis instead of the normal weekly or daily distribution of periodicals,
discussions of literary merit should never be based upon quantity. In-
deed, even single-issue chapbooks that focused on social problems, such as
Thomas Spence’s The End of Oppression, deserve equal critical attention.
The designation of literary quality, however, implies a subjective
evaluation based upon criteria that may or may not be either openly
acknowledged or even relevant. A more realistic argument can establish
the merit of chapbooks through two complicated and related questions.
First, does the medium of the chapbook contain the potential of artistic
expression, or more directly, is it possible that some chapbooks were
actually well written? Second and more important, to what extent did
chapbook writers achieve the goal from the ‰rst question? The ‰rst ques-
tion, of course, becomes relatively simple to answer if terms such as
“chapbook” or “street literature” are replaced by simpler and less cultur-
ally loaded identi‰cations like “a twenty-four page story” or “a thirty-
two page story.” These new identi‰cations, then, quickly correlate to a
familiar and standard format of literature — the short story.
Stripped from both prejudicial judgment and historical context, chap-
books and short stories can be considered synonymous. Academia, how-
ever, has chosen to ignore such resemblances and because of the tradi-
tion of prejudice against chapbooks and the lack of research on the
chapbook trade some scholars unwittingly employed revisionism when
describing the historical origins of the modern short story. Many eigh-
teenth-century chapbook writers from London would be very surprised to
learn from Ann Charters, a well-known critic, that “In the early nineteenth
century, German writers were the ‰rst to develop original, imaginative
4. The James Boswell Chapbook Collection is housed at the Child Memorial
Library at Harvard University.
narratives that resemble what we call short stories.”5 In actuality, ‰ction-
oriented chapbooks, along with many other types of periodical ‰ction,
contributed directly to the formation of the more respectable and criti-
cally accepted modern literary format of the short story. The potential
for artistic expression, therefore, de‰nitely existed within the chapbook
format.
As with any format of writing though, a great deal of chapbook liter-
ature never rose above the use of stock characters or convoluted plot-
lines. Given the sheer numbers of chapbooks published, such ‰ndings
should not be surprising. A few chapbook writers, however, achieved
higher literary goals. One of the best ways to illustrate this fact without
the bias of subjectivity involves highlighting the literary inŠuence of
chapbooks upon canonical writers. As William St. Clair argues in The
Reading Nation in the Romantic Period, knowledge of prior reading ma-
terial can greatly inform an understanding of the ways in which culture
evolves, including how new literature is created. Many well-known and
highly respected eighteenth and nineteenth-century authors, such as
John Clare, Edmund Burke, Thomas Holcroft, William Godwin, Fran-
cis Place, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Thomas Carter, George Crabbe,
William Hazlitt, William Wordsworth, and Walter Scott not only read
chapbooks but also later recalled their reading experiences with great
fondness.6 Most of these experiences, of course, are situated during their
formative years because of the stigmatizing inŠuence popular ‰ction
held. Like literary critics, very few notable authors admitted to a contin-
ued relationship with chapbooks beyond childhood. Thomas Medwin,
a friend and biographer of Percy Bysshe Shelley, writes of their child-
hood reading experiences:
Who does not know what blue books mean? But if there should be any one
ignorant enough not to know what those dear darling volumes, so designated
from their covers, contain, be it known, that they are or were to be bought for
sixpence, and embodied stories of haunted castles, bandits, murderers, and other
grim personages–a most exciting and interesting sort of food for boys’ minds.7
5. Ann Charters, “A Brief History of the Short Story,” The Story and Its Writer,
ed. Ann Charters (Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2003), 1731.
6. William St. Clair, The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period (New York: Cam-
bridge University Press, 2004), 339.
7. Thomas Medwin, Life Of Percy Bysshe Shelley (London: Thomas Cautley New-
by, 1847), 29–30.
Chapbooks, then, provided an unknown amount of literary fodder
that later germinated in the minds of many writers. The variety of sto-
ries that Medwin relates stimulated the imagination and motivated
many eventually to create their own stories. To emphasize this measure
of inŠuence, most of the biographical accounts that detailed similar fa-
vorable reading experiences almost unanimously agreed on one other
point — the way they read chapbooks. Nineteenth-century writers who
previously read chapbooks typically did so with passionate abandon that,
at times, bordered on obsession. They never passively read chapbooks,
but, instead, actively engaged with the wide range of stories, morals,
ideas, and questions presented within the pages of those popular book-
lets. Thomas Carlyle described his own introduction to chapbooks in
his semi-factual work, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr
Teufelsdrockh, when he says,
My very copper pocket-money I laid out on stall-literature; which, as it accu-
mulated, I with my own hands sewed into volumes. By this means was the
young head furnished with a considerable miscellany of things and shadows of
things: History in authentic fragments lay mingled with Fabulous chimeras,
wherein also was reality; and the whole not as dead stuˆ, but as living pabu-
lum, tolerably nutritive for a mind as yet so peptic.8
The reading experience Carlyle described deeply aêcted many canoni-
cal writers in the way they viewed literature and the world around them.
Both writers described chapbooks as edible, yet each took something
diêrent away from the experience. Medwin focused on the actual sto-
ries and the action of the characters while Carlyle’s “miscellany” tried to
describe the less tangible aspects.
Even though chapbooks contributed greatly to the formation of later
literary works, tracing the inŠuence of chapbooks through the written
works of other writers poses a problem of subjectivity. Fortunately, the
inherent problem of establishing the origins of artistic ideas can be avoid-
ed altogether since the “living pabulum” of chapbook literature can be
discovered in a number of alternative directions. William Wordsworth
makes direct reference to his childhood experience of reading chapbooks
in the poem entitled “Books” in his major work, The Prelude. He says,
Oh! give us once again the wishing-cap
Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat
8. Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of Herr Teufelsdrockh
(New York: Peter Fenelon Collier, 1897), 78.
Of Jack the Giant-killer, Robin Hood,
And Sabra in the forest with St. George!
The child, whose love is here, at least, doth reap
One precious gain, that he forgets himself.9
Medwin and Carlyle believed chapbooks provided sustenance — cre-
ative fuel that each consumed. Wordsworth also saw the opposite. He
engaged so deeply in the reading experience that chapbooks made him
forget his own existence, and metaphorically, chapbooks consumed him.
In describing one of the greatest characteristics of prose ‰ction, that of
transporting the reader beyond the physical limitations of ordinary life,
Wordsworth extolled the merits of a literary format that many academic
critics have since designated as worthless.
Typically, scholars also distinguished demarcations between literary
genres in order to better understand general trends and characteristics,
but writers, even chapbook writers, have historically experimented with
the perceived boundaries of their craft. Many late-eighteenth-century
chapbooks could be quickly categorized as part of standard Gothic fare,
although the designation of others requires a deeper analysis of the genre’s
de‰ning terms. Not all chapbook writers followed formulaic rules. Even
with this consideration, the simplistic classi‰cation of all late-eigh-
teenth-century chapbooks as prose ‰ction still neglects approximately
42 percent of the chapbook trade (see Table 1). Chapbook authors used
their medium for a great number of purposes beyond story-telling or
social commentary. In one particular case, an author employed the
chapbook format as the means to develop and present part of his current
research to the public, similar to the way in which today’s scholars com-
pose articles for academic journals. In 1798, Ann Lemoine published New
Art of Swimming. With Dr. Franklin’s Directions to Swimmers, and Dr.
Buchan’s Advice on River and Sea-Bathing, but Alexander Peter Buchan, a
well-respected doctor of medicine from London, probably conducted
the major portion of writing, editing, and layout for this chapbook. Of
the three parts to this chapbook, the ‰rst and second part can be attrib-
uted to earlier sources. The ‰rst section resulted from a redaction of The
Art of Swimming, originally written by Melchisédech Thévenot in the
late seventeenth century, and Buchan abridged a short work by Ben-
jamin Franklin for the second section. The third section, however, did
9. William Wordsworth, The Complete Poetical Works of William Wordsworth
(London: MacMillan, 1909), 267.
table 1
Distribution of Ann Lemoine Chapbooks According to Content*
Religious and Moral. 2
Household Manuals. 2
Historical, Political, and Biographical. 4
Travel and Adventure. 16
Odd Characters and Strange Events. 12
Prose Fiction. 117
Legendary Romances, Fairy Stories, and
Folk Tales in Verse. 11
Dramatic. 1
Metrical Tales and other Verse. 2
Song Books. 15
Jest Books, Humorous Fiction, Riddles, etc. 2
Humorous Metrical Tales. 2
Occult. 7
Crimes and Criminals 6
Miscellaneous: Matrimony 2
*Chapbook compilations are not included. Categories are based upon those de-
vised by Victor Neuburg in Chapbooks: A Guide to Reference Material on English,
Scottish and American Chapbook Literature of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries.
not contain a redaction, but the exact opposite. Dr. Buchan did not
complete his longer work, Treatise on Sea-Bathing, with Remarks on the
Use of the Warm Bath, until 1801, a full three years later. The Buchan
article that appeared in the 1798 Lemoine chapbook constituted an early
draft of his ongoing research. Buchan also redacted the works by Frank-
lin and Thévenot as part of his historical survey of the use of water
immersion as a therapeutic technique. In this case, a chapbook not only
displayed the original work by Dr. Buchan, but also became a tool which
helped to inspire and develop further writing.
In truth, the number of diêrent manners in which chapbook writers
approached their format and used the medium to express their artistic
viewpoint, like writers in general, can only be equaled by the overwhelm-
ing number of diêrent chapbooks printed. The total number of chap-
books printed at any point in the past is unknown. From the scant knowl-
edge available through historical collections, bibliographies, personal
accounts, and other documents, production numbers may very well be
estimated in millions. The production of one single chapbook, Thomas
Paine’s Rights of Man, has been estimated between four and ‰ve hundred
thousand copies.10 Unfortunately, a great number of chapbooks have
not survived the ravages of time. Part of this is due to their fragile na-
ture. Unlike larger bound books, chapbooks were never intended for long-
term use. Not only did chapbook printers use the cheapest paper avail-
able, they were bound, in most cases, with threaded string. In some
cases, chapbooks were sold as a single sheet of paper; the buyer was then
expected to cut the sheets apart and thread the pages himself. Chap-
books were viewed as ephemeral. They were meant to be read once, possi-
bly passed on to one or two other people, and then thrown away.
There is something inherently curious about chapbooks, possibly due
to their small size, their sometimes crude, but quaint, illustrations, or
their provocative use of sensational titles, that has endeared them to
collectors. Because of this, there are numerous collections still extant,
such as the Pepys Collection, the James Boswell collection, and the
chapbook collection at the Bodleian. In recent years, new collections,
such as the Corvey Collection and the Elizabeth Nesbitt Collection,
have drawn critical interest. Every major library, both American and
European, has at least one chapbook in their holdings, typically gather-
ing dust on some forgotten shelf.
In 2002, Cardiˆ Corvey: Reading the Romantic Text published an arti-
cle by Angela Koch, a researcher at Paderborn in the Projekt Corvey
who is involved in indexing and analyzing the materials located in the
Corvey Library. In an eôrt to recreate a historical portrait of the Goth-
ic chapbook trade, Koch presented “bibliographic details of 217 Gothic
bluebooks scattered throughout twenty-one national, academic, and
private libraries in the British Isles, North America, and Germany.”11
From an analysis of her results, Ann Lemoine published 60 of the 217
chapbooks, a full 27 percent. Since the next leading publisher, Tegg and
Castleman, only accounted for 32 chapbooks, Ann Lemoine easily led
the industry and published more chapbooks than any other publisher in
London between 1795 and 1815.
A thorough understanding of the chapbook trade will provide a use-
ful insight into the minds and actions of the people of the late eighteenth
10. Leslie Shepard, The History of Street Literature (Detroit: Singing Tree Press,
1973), 66.
11. Angela Koch, “‘The Absolute Horror of Horrors’ Revised: A Bibliographical
Checklist of Early Nineteenth Century Gothic Bluebooks” Cardiˆ Corvey: Read-
ing the Romantic Text 9 (December 2002): 45.
century. Social forces, from many directions, can be traced through pub-
lished material directed toward the lower ranks and orders, and the re-
sulting patterns may enlighten scholars towards new perspectives of
culture formation and other historical questions. Such a study will re-
quire an examination of the full extent and range of Ann Lemoine’s
chapbooks. Unfortunately, no known production records exist. This is
not at all unusual. Since chapbooks were considered disposable litera-
ture, exact numbers are impossible to ascertain. Enough surviving evi-
dence remains, however, to provide a stable platform from which several
deductions can be made. Because Lemoine was the most proli‰c chap-
book publisher of her time, even though chapbooks in general were not
designed to be kept beyond the ‰rst few readings, numerous collections
have carefully preserved copies of her publications. Virtually every ma-
jor library in North America owns at least one Lemoine chapbook. By
collating listings from various library card catalogues and other sources, a
record of Ann Lemoine’s publishing history can be reconstructed. A
working database was created by collecting listings available through
the open-access, online catalogues of the one-hundred and twenty-
three member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries.12 In
addition, listings were gathered from the OCLC WorldCat database,
the online British and Bodleian library catalogues, and through catalogues
of the second-hand book market, particularly ABE books. From this
research, 201 Ann Lemoine chapbooks have been preserved (see Fig. 2).
By examining this basic pool of data, the total number of separate
chapbooks published by Lemoine can be estimated to have been around
400 titles. This extrapolation is based upon several clues discovered
within the compiled listing. One of these is the Heart of Oak series
which was an annual compilation of popular song lyrics. The oldest
extant edition of the series was published in 1802, but Lemoine subtitled
the 1813 as the “Sixteenth Annual Collection,” so apparently she began
this series shortly after she set up shop in 1797. Later annual editions
after 1813 may exist, but if so, none have survived. Of the sixteen known
annuals, only nine have been preserved, slightly more than half. Anoth-
er clue involves the chapbook compilation set Popular Tales, Lives, and
Adventures. Lemoine discovered that she could take advantage of the
upscale book market through chapbook compilations. She based the
12. The database is available online at http://mypage.siu.edu/roywhite/Lemoine.
html.
Fig. 2: Known number of dated chapbooks printed for Ann Lemoine. There are 10
Ann Lemoine chapbooks that are yet to be dated. Chapbook compilations are not
included in numbers.
compilations around a theme, such as sea adventures or children’s sto-
ries, and bound together a small collection of chapbooks with a hard
cover. Typically, Lemoine designed, and fortunately labeled, these com-
pilations as multi-volume sets. Even though she planned for Popular
Tales, Lives, and Adventures to be a six-volume set, only three volumes,
one-half of the set, still exist. With the popular set entitled English Nights
Entertainments, Lemoine evidenced that she planned well in advance
for the publication of this compilation since, for a number of the includ-
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compilatio
mpilationn title above the individual
chapbook title. Lemoine probably released each of these individual chap-
books on a regular installment basis. Of this four-volume set, however,
only volume two has been found. Counting these various examples, copies
of roughly half of all Lemoine chapbooks have survived, providing an
overall total of slightly more than four hundred chapbooks.
In comparison to novel production during the same time period, the
results are staggering. According to James Raven in Judging New
Wealth, “By 1800 some ninety new novels were published annually. At
the same date, total annual novel publication, including reprints,
amounted to well over 150 titles.”13 Raven’s statistics, however, do not
single out any one publisher, but instead cover the entire English pub-
lishing industry at the turn of the century. During a single year, 1805,
Lemoine, only one of a dozen other chapbook publishers who printed
13. James Raven, Judging New Wealth: Popular Publishing and Responses to Com-
merce in England, 1750–1800 (New York: Clarendon Press, 1992), 31.
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and distributed their wares on the streets of London during this same
time period, accounted for thirty-‰ve known separate titles and work-
ing from previously established assumptions may have accounted for as
many as seventy diêrent chapbooks. Production runs of separate chap-
book editions varied greatly, although printings of up to four thousand
copies were not at all unusual. Paine’s The Rights of Man was mentioned
earlier.14 Hannah More’s ‰rst chapbook for the Cheap Repository Tract
Society, printed in 1795, sold more than one million copies in a single
year. Other publishers of street literature have recounted similar stories.
James Catnach, in 1824, printed 250,000 copies of a broadsheet recount-
ing the events surrounding a recent London murder.15 In 1832, William
and Robert Chambers produced a weekly chapbook containing short
‰ctional stories “devoted to wholesome popular instruction blended
with original amusing matter,” which boasted a circulation of 80,000
copies.16 A more conservative estimate for the printing run of an aver-
age chapbook at the turn of the century would stand at 2,000 copies,
giving a conservative estimated total production of all Lemoine chap-
books easily within the range of one million copies and, depending upon
the popularity of certain titles, probably well exceeded that number. Com-
bined with the fact that Ann Lemoine’s husband, Henry Lemoine, gar-
nered an enormous reputation as a chapbook writer, publisher, printer
and bookseller, the importance of the Lemoines to the chapbook indus-
try is indisputable.
Even though the chapbook industry as a whole, because of the huge
popularity of the medium, held such inŠuence over public debate, indi-
viduals within the trade often did not recognize the precarious position
they occupied. Very few chapbook publishers successfully navigated re-
peated crossings of those social categories. Collectively, that part of the
printing industry that dealt with popular street literature survived and
eventually grew stronger. Individually, however, chapbook publishers did
not fare as well. The story of Henry and Ann Lemoine details the more
successful chapbook publishers of the later eighteenth century. Between
them, the Lemoines occupied every position in the street literature in-
dustry and, in doing so, both crossed a number of the shifting social
14. See note 10.
15. Shepard, 74.
16. Victor E. Neuburg, Popular Literature: A History and Guide (Totowa, NJ:
Woburn Press, 1977), 203.
barriers with various degrees of success. Because of who they were and
what they did with chapbook publication, their story not only repre-
sents the print revolution of the eighteenth century, but it also repre-
sents the larger social revolution as well.
The full story of the Lemoines has never been compiled and, unfor-
tunately, their early years prior to 1795 remain beyond the limited scope
of this paper. History tends to document those individuals who owned
either inŠuence or money. The Lemoines owned neither. They belonged
to the working class of London and, as such, left behind few clues con-
cerning their life’s work. Fortunately, Henry Lemoine created an image
of himself as an eccentric that was perpetuated by both his peers and his
critics. Anecdotes about his life circulated through various magazines of
the early nineteenth century. Some writers correctly portrayed this im-
portant chapbook writer and publisher while others merely recounted
false and demeaning rumors. As one critic recently observed about Hen-
ry Lemoine, “the Dickensian ups and downs of his career only reŠect
the realities of the publishing system, its opportunities on the one hand
and severities on the other.”17
Between 1780 and 1795, Henry Lemoine operated a bookstall in Bishop-
gate Church yard, although he followed various pursuits besides the
buying and selling of old books. Often, the simplistic view of specialized
trades in the late eighteenth century does not accommodate the harsh eco-
nomic realities which many encountered. In 1861, Henry Mayhew pub-
lished his important work, London Labour and the London Poor, in which
he categorized street vendors by the merchandise they sold. Mayhew
subdivided booksellers into precise occupations such as “Street-sellers
of Pocket-books and Diaries” and “Street-sellers of Almanacs and Memo-
randum-books.” 18 While his work provides an important, and much
needed, view into the lives of the working classes, his description of the
occupational organization of the London lower classes deceptively
strati‰ed labor categories. Booksellers, as with most street vendors,
focused more on surviving than in staying within the arbitrary boundaries
of their craft. Along with books, Lemoine oêred his customers medicines
and cure-alls. These cure-alls included a concoction called “Bug-water,”
17. H. J. Jackson, Romantic Readers: The Evidence of Marginalia (Ann Arbor:
Sherican Books, 2005), 22.
18. Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor. 1861. vol. 1. (New York:
Dover Publications, 1968), 1:306.
the formula for which Lemoine supposedly received from Dr. Thomas
Marryat.19 In this respect, Lemoine simply followed the long tradition
of chapmen of selling triŠes and baubles, such as ribbons and gloves, as
well as chapbooks. Finances often forced chapmen and booksellers to
sell non-book related items in order to maintain their book trade.
During his years as a bookseller, Henry Lemoine not only published
and sold chapbooks, he also wrote poetry, ‰ction, as well as critical es-
says on the book trades. He began serveral popular magazines, such as
The Conjuror’s Magazine; or, Magical and Physiognomical Mirror and The
Eccentric Magazine; or, Lives and Portraits of Remarkable Persons. He ed-
ited serveral large books, such as an updated edition of Nicholas Cul-
peper’s The English Physitian; or, An Astrologo-physical Discourse of the
Vulgar Herbs of this Nation. He was even moderately successful with the
release of a four-volume novel, The Kentish Curate; or, The History of
Lamuel Lyttleton, a Foundling and other original works, such as Modern
Manhood; or, The Art and Practice of English Boxing, The Cuckold’s Chron-
icle, Being Select Trials for Adultry, Incest, Imbecillity, Ravishment, &c.,
and Typographical Antiquities: History, Origin, and Progress of the Art of
Printing. Like most people involved in the book trades, Henry Lemoine
constantly struggled to earn a living and possibly gain a literary reputa-
tion, but unlike the later success of his wife, he was unable to avoid the
pitfalls inherent in the book trades.
Most accounts of Lemoine simply say that he “gave up shopkeeping
in 1795, and became a pedestrian bookseller or colporteur of pamphlets.”20
The truth remains far more complicated. By 1794, Lemoine ‰rmly es-
tablished himself at Bishopgate Church yard without any reports that
he continued to sell “bug water” to support himself and his family. The
amount, and quality, of his writings increased. His reputation as a knowl-
edgeable printer and bookseller rose quickly, and a number of well-read
publications mentioned his works.21 Within the world of literature, he
‰nally made the right contacts and verged on moving into the more
visible forum of the eighteenth-century literati. During this time peri-
od, very few writers of street literature ever progressed into the more
19. Seccombe, 28.
20. W. Roberts, The Book-Hunter in London: Historical and Other Studies of Col-
lectors and Collecting (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1895), 161.
21. John Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (London: Nichols,
Son, and Bentley, 1812), 728.
Illus. 1: AU: Please provide a caption for each illustration. Check past
issues of PBSA for the form.
respectable realm of literature, but Henry Lemoine began to do just
that. Since Henry, like many other chapbook writers, viewed the indus-
try as a whole, an increase in his writing reputation necessitated his
growth as a bookseller as well.
The means of distributing chapbooks diêred greatly from those used
by the larger book trade and reŠected the economic limitations that the
lower ranks and orders of society experienced. Lemoine sold his wares
from a bookstall and not a shop. There are a number of diêrences be-
tween the two types of establishments; the most notable is the physical
aspect. Bookstalls were sectioned areas within a larger space similar to an
open-air bazaar. On a scale of social respectability, ownership of a book-
stall placed him one step above the wandering vendors, but not on a level
with a shop owner. Typically, however, stall merchants depended wholly
upon their own time and labor or that of their family members to run the
business. Normally, they did not have employees in the same sense that
some shop owners did. No mention or record that Lemoine ever took on
apprentices exists, so, when he pursued other interests such as writing or
printing, his bookstall would be closed. In all likelihood, his wife worked
for some time in his bookstall which may be where she learned about
the chapbook industry. Another option existed for street merchants that
appealed to both well-established sellers and those newly started. Mer-
chants could sub-lease their space and allow others to sell items in their
name. In the stall owners’ absence, the sub-leasers could operate out of
the space, but when the stall owners required the space, sub-leasers would
have to sell their wares by wandering through the streets of London.
The ability to oêr credit during this time separated street vendors
from merchants operating from a permanent shop and, by extension,
reŠected the perceived diêrence between the chapbook trade and the
elite book world. Wandering chapbook sellers depended upon either
cash transactions or easily transferred barters since they did not have the
luxury of being able to exchange goods for a promise of future payment.
By the end of the eighteenth century, however, well-established book-
sellers regularly extended credit to their customers. The ability to oêr
credit meant both success and stability. Henry Lemoine, like many oth-
ers in the book trade, oêred credit to his customers, but he went one
step further and also extended credit to other booksellers, an act which
quickly led to his eventual ‰nancial ruin.
As a printer and writer, as well as a bookseller, Lemoine occupied a
secure position from which he could inŠuence both society at large and
other members of the chapbook trade. He could not only provide a new
bookseller with a place to operate from, but he could also supply the new
merchant with chapbooks to sell. This arrangement probably appealed
to Henry on two distinct levels. Lemoine could earn pro‰t from two
separate, but related, directions, and he could also inaugurate someone
new into the inner mysteries of the book trades, which appeared as one
of the themes in his later writings. The later motivating force most like-
ly convinced him, in 1794, to extend £129 credit to two unknown book-
sellers, who later defaulted on their loan. In a time when many profes-
sions paid an annual salary of only £60, very few businessmen kept such
a large sum of money as £129 on hand. The failure of the two booksellers
to repay their loan placed Lemoine in a precarious ‰nancial situation.
Even today, most small businessmen depend upon a regular Šow of in-
come in order to meet with their ‰nancial obligations, and Lemoine did
not operate his business any diêrently. Lemoine probably owned more
than this amount in hard assets, but he did not have the cash Šow to
cover this loss. When his debts came due he simply could not pay them
and subsequently was incarcerated in debtor’s prison. Lemoine’s career
in the chapbook trade portrayed the continual and precarious balance
between economic survival and the construction of literary reputations.
The literary reputation that he had carefully built over the years evapo-
rated in scandal. From this point onward, Lemoine’s literary career spi-
raled downward; but, at the same time, Ann Lemoine’s career as the ‰rst
female chapbook publisher began.
Henry Lemoine’s imprisonment was almost certainly the impetus for
Ann Lemoine to start her publishing career. It is unknown whether she
divorced her husband after his incarceration.although it is certain they
became estranged from each other over the incident. She may have
viewed Lemoine’s failed business arrangement as the last in a long series
of marital transgressions. She may have also wanted to distance herself
from the public shame that her husband brought upon the family, or as a
‰nancial maneuver, orchestrated either with or without her husband’s
assistance, in order to build a barrier that would protect herself and her
two children against economic ruin. Regardless of the speci‰c details
concerning their separation, the timing of Ann Lemoine’s entry into
chapbook publishing, in 1795, was fortuitous. With the release of Ann
Radcliê’s hugely popular The Mysteries of Udolpho the year before and
the impending release of Matthew Lewis’s The Monk in 1796, the craze
for Gothic literature was entering its highest point and chapbook pub-
lishers were set to see their largest era of sales. Ann Lemoine’s last name,
which in French translates to “the monk,” must have been a great mar-
keting tool, but she built her success as a chapbook publisher with far
more than just an interesting name.
Ann Lemoine possessed an uncanny ability to understand the desires
of potential chapbook readers and used that knowledge to improve and
forever change the chapbook format. In many cases, she rejected the
traditional model of the chapbook trade and experimented with diêr-
ent approaches to design and produce her small booklets. Although she
published reading material for the lower orders, she modeled her chap-
books after the more expensive book trade. She did not believe that the
lower orders wanted or deserved a lower order of chapbooks. Her con-
tributions to the chapbook industry positively shifted the way in which
both publishers and readers viewed popular reading material. Above all
else, she became the ‰rst fully independent female publisher in En-
gland. Between the years of 1795 and 1820, she published well over four
hundred separate chapbooks. She may have written a good number of
the chapbooks herself, but she also employed one of the most popular
chapbook writers of the time, Sarah Wilkinson. A great many of these
chapbooks could be considered Gothic, but she also published song-
books, jokebooks, adventure stories, and children’s tales. Lemoine pub-
lished what the reading public wanted to read, and did so in great quan-
tities. During the years of her business, she published more than any of
her competitors. Through this venture, she experimented with almost
every aspect of chapbook compilation and production and became the
most popular and creative chapbook publisher of the late eighteenth
century. Since Lemoine readily experimented with all aspects of content,
production, and marketing, both her publishing successes and failures
provide valuable insights into the minds of eighteenth-century readers.
Lemoine began her publishing venture almost by default, and like
other publishers of street literature, she relied heavily upon the advice
and work of others. In her case, the inŠuence of her husband greatly
determined her early publication choices. Her ‰rst chapbook, published
in 1795 and entitled, The Facetious Story of John Gilpin; His Going Farther
than he Intended, and Returning Home Safe at Last. By Mr. Cowper, and a
Second Part; Containing an Account of the Disastrous Accidents which Befel
his Wife, on her Return to London. By Henry Lemoine. To which Is Added,
Gilpin’s Second Holiday. Written by the Late John Oakman, consisted of
twenty-four pages and sold for fourpence. The fact her ex-husband
wrote this chapbook shows that there remained some connection be-
tween the two. Other evidence demonstrates, at least in the early years,
that the Lemoines cooperated in the chapbook business. In a letter
printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine, dated 17 June 1795, Henry Lem-
oine gave his return address as White Rose Court, the same location
from which Ann Lemoine published all of her chapbooks. He also
anonymously authored a number of Ann Lemoine chapbooks. Henry
Lemoine, however, did not intend to completely hide his identity since
he did leave a number of clues in his writing. In the 1798 chapbook, The
Life and Mysterious Transactions of Richard Morris, Esq. Better Known by
the Name of Dick Spot, the Conjuror, Particularly in Derbyshire and Shrop-
shire. Written by an Old Acquaintance, not only does the author refer to
himself as a “jew bookmaker,”22 a reference to his continued association
with David Levi, but makes direct reference to a letter he received as
editor of the Conjuror’s Magazine in 1791.23 In The Life of Richard Turpin,
a Notorious Highwayman, printed in 1800, the author employs trial tran-
scripts in the same fashion that Henry Lemoine did in The Cuckold’s
Chronicle. Both New Lights from the World of Darkness; or, The Midnight
Messenger as well as Laugh When you Can; or, The Monstrous Droll Jester
exhibits Henry Lemoine’s writing style. Out of more than two hundred
chapbooks, however, Henry Lemoine authored only ‰ve and, between
1803 and 1812, printed seven.
Regardless of whatever means allowed Ann Lemoine to start her
chapbook business, she achieved her success because of her own skill in
establishing and maintaining proper relationships with chapbook writ-
ers, printers, and booksellers and by predicting what the buying public
wanted to read. Like her husband, she crossed a number of social cate-
gories. The boundaries she crossed, however, involved her career outside
the traditional gender role for women in the eighteenth century. Among
the lower classes, women lacked career opportunities. As one scholar
notes, “the societies of early modern Europe placed strict limits on the
exercise of power by women. Although their roles in the family and
22. Lemoine, Morris, 26.
23. Ibid., 30.
household economy carried some legitimate authority, and although ex-
ceptional women had their impact on public aâirs, the cultural concep-
tion of social order required that women be subordinated and controlled
by men.”24 Women simply did not hold positions of power within Lon-
don’s business community at the turn of the century. This makes Ann
Lemoine’s case all the more remarkable because existing records indi-
cate that Ann Lemoine possibly became the ‰rst woman to enter into
the book publishing business. One reason why Ann Lemoine garnered
such success in the chapbook industry may be due to the fact that, tech-
nically, she did not have employees and, for that reason, others did not
view her as a typical business owner. Chapbook publishers, in a number
of ways, operated as facilitators. They brought the diêrent trades and
crafts together through ‰nancial dealings. They arranged to buy stories
from authors; they worked with printers in designing formats; and they
provided street vendors with a steady supply of merchandise. Those that
did business with chapbook publishers acted, and viewed themselves, as
independent agents. Very few writers, printers, or booksellers would be
willing to acknowledge their dependence upon a single chapbook pub-
lisher. In this manner, however, Lemoine’s control of not only her own
business, but that of others, depended upon her skill and acumen in
understanding the chapbook market.
Lemoine achieved her success in the chapbook industry by fully em-
bracing traditional ways of making chapbooks attractive to potential
readers and, in the majority of cases, improving upon them. Lemoine
believed that the title held an incredible amount of inŠuence upon
potential readers and she learned way to manipulate that inŠuence. Just
as it is today, both readers and publishers determined available reading
material, but the predetermined options provided by publishers limit
available choices. One of the long-standing idiosyncrasies of not only
chapbooks, but also of higher-priced bound books of the era, included
the use of the title-page as a major means of enticing potential readers.
Both publishers and readers considered titles to be of utmost impor-
tance and in most instances, preferred elaborate chapbook titles which
typically combined a short, primary title with a lengthier explanatory
title separated by a semicolon. Lemoine followed this format with such
24. Joy Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literature
of Early Modern England and Germany (Charlottesville, VA: University Press of
Virginia, 1992), 7.
titles as The Beautiful African; or, Love and Slavery. An Interesting Tale or
Edwin; or, The Wandering Fugitive. An History Founded on Facts. The
last part of the title informed potential readers of the type of story being
oêred. Readers, evidently, did not welcome surprises in the type of
reading material being purchased. They not only wanted to know ahead
of time whether the chapbook was worth the price, but they also wanted
to know some basic facts about the chapbook, such as whether the story
was a romance, a history, or a historical romance. In a number of cases,
this full disclosure of reading material listed the major plot points, as
with The Sicilian Pirate; or, The Pillar of Mystery. A Terri‰c Romance.
Forming the Singular Life and Adventures of Adelmorn; Who, after Selling
Himself to the Devil, at the Instigation of a Lapland Wizzard, Becomes a
Notorious Pirate, and, by His Depredations and Cruelties, Renders Himself
the Terror of the Northern Parts of Europe. At Length the Wizzard’s Predic-
tions is Ful‰lled, and He Ends His Days Overwhelmed with Anguish and
Despair. The trick, then, for chapbook publishers was not only to give
just enough information about the story to satisfy the need for full dis-
closure, but to also form that information in such a way as to arouse and
titillate the curiosity of potential readers to go beyond the title-page.
Lemoine realized the importance of chapbook titles as a major factor
in persuading readers to look closer at certain publications. Her title
manipulation can be best demonstrated by contrasting her chapbook
redactions with the original works. Many chapbook publishers sold
chapbooks that contained abridged versions of longer novels. The low
price of these redactions allowed the lower classes to enjoy the same
popular ‰ction that the upper classes read. Even with such name recog-
nition, however, chapbook titles needed to go further. Lemoine knew
that lengthier titles did not necessarily equal better titles. Titles needed
to give enough information to titillate, but not enough to make readers
feel as though they knew the complete story before buying a chapbook.
In eêct, full disclosure also meant conciseness, so when Lemoine
abridged Penelope Aubin’s 1736 novel The Life of Charlotta Du Pont, she
streamlined the title considerably. Aubin’s original, over-informative ti-
tle was The Life of Charlotta Du Pont, an English Lady; Taken from Her
Own Memoirs: Giving an Account How She Was Trepan’d by Her Step-
mother to Virginia, How the Ship Was Taken by some Madagascar Pirates
and Retaken by a Spanish Man of War, of Her Marriage in the Spanish
West-Indies and Adventures whilst She Resided there, with Her Return to
Illus. 2-3: AU: Please provide a caption for this pair of images.
England; and, the History of Several Gentlemen and Ladies Whom She Met
withal in Her Travels, some of Whom Had Been Slaves in Barbary and
Others Cast on Shore by Shipwreck on the Barbarous Coasts up the Great
River Oroonoko, with Their Escape thence and Safe Return to France and
Spain: a History that Contains the Greatest Variety of Events that ever Was
Published. Aubin left very little question concerning the major plot line
of her novel. Lemoine felt she could improve upon the title and wisely
renamed her chapbook The Life, Adventures and Distresses of Charlotte
Dupont, and Her Lover Belanger; Who, It Is Supposed, Underwent a Great-
er Variety of Real Misfortunes, and Miraculous Adventures, than Any Cou-
ple That Ever Existed. The vagueness of Lemoine’s redacted title served
as a major selling point by intriguing potential readers to know the exact
nature of Charlotte’s misfortunes and adventures.
At a time when the large number of chapbook redactions created
‰erce competition among publishers, Lemoine moved well beyond the
simple abridgement of longer works and took a more creative approach
towards reshaping the original material. In certain instances, her redactions
were designed to focus upon one particular theme or topic from the
original. When she redacted A General History of the Robberies and Mur-
ders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, a popular book typically misattributed
to Daniel Defoe, she reformatted the focus of the chapbook and devised
the new title to read, Lives of Most Remarkable Female Robbers; The German
Princess, a Robber & Impostor. Moll Cut-Purse, a Pickpocket & Highway-
woman. Mary Read [and] Anne Bonny, Pirates. Nan Hereford, a Cheat &
Impostor. Instead of abridging the entire work, she separated the original
pirate stories by gender. While stories of pirates intrigued chapbook read-
ers who loved adventure, stories of female pirates provided a second layer
of gender transgression that provoked and enticed a much larger audience.
Lemoine possessed a unique awareness of reader motivation. She knew
that a great many readers, regardless of their educational level, relied
upon simple name recognition in choosing reading material. Name rec-
ognition could lead to hasty impressions. In 1802, Ann Lemoine pub-
lished a forty-two page chapbook entitled Canterbury Tales. This chap-
book used name recognition in two diêrent ways. While educated
readers would immediately question how the famous work by Geoˆrey
Chaucer could be redacted into only forty-two pages, others, with only a
passing familiarity with the notoriety of Chaucer’s work, might have
been drawn to the Lemoine chapbook as a redaction of the original
because they failed to read the full title: Canterbury Tales: Containing
The Great Devil’s Tale; or, Castle of Morbano. The Old Abbey Tale; or, Vil-
lage Terrors; The British Sailor’s Tale; And the Knight’s Tale. Lemoine’s
1802 chapbook also took advantage of the current popularity of another
work, written by Harriet and Sophia Lee in 1798, entitled The Canter-
bury Tales. Even less similarity existed between Lemoine’s work and
that of the Lee sisters than with Chaucer’s work. Lemoine did not really
intend to redact either work. Instead, she used the title-page in the most
pro‰table way possible. Her chapbook became so popular that she re-
leased a second volume of Canterbury Tales soon afterwards.
This use of name recognition can also be seen with revised editions of
some of the most popular of Lemoine’s chapbooks. One of her ‰rst
chapbooks, a jokebook entitled Laugh When You Can; or, The Monstrous
Droll Jester. Containing the Best Collection of Jests. To Which is Added, The
Benevolent Jew, as Recited at the Royalty Theatre, originally released in
1795, must have been a good seller because when she released another
jokebook in 1800 she mimicked the title. She called her second jokebook
Laugh When You Can; or, The Monstrous Droll Jester, and Chearful Com-
panion. Containing Upwards of Two Hundred and Fifty Good Things, Many
of Which Are Not to Be Found in Any Other Collection. The 1800 edition
did reuse some of the same jokes, but included mostly new material.
The format of the newer edition, however, diêred substantially enough
to have justi‰ed a completely new title. By keeping the ‰rst part of the
title, Lemoine built upon the established popularity of the ‰rst edition.
Lemoine also published songbooks with this marketing technique.
Chapbooks that conveyed lyrics for current songs remained a traditional
mainstay of chapbook publishers and sold consistently throughout the
eighteenth century. Chapbook publishers believed that the success of a
chapbook series, such as the popularity of The Heart of Oak series, auto-
matically relied upon the popularity of previous editions, and publishers
typically designated such editions as new issues within the series. With
The Heart of Oak series, for example, readers could immediately distin-
guish between the 1811 edition and the 1810 edition by the complete title.
Lemoine, however, used this same series technique for other song lyric
compilations, such as The Universal Songster and The Victory; or, British
Harmony, which she never designated as part of a series. Only the title
connects these chapbooks. In 1807, Lemoine released two separate ver-
sions of The Victory. Although both versions used the same title, the
contents of each chapbook diêred drastically, and only a closer exami-
nation would inform potential readers that they were not looking at the
same chapbook. The fact that Lemoine published The Heart of Oak se-
ries later in her career than either The Universal Songster or The Victory
shows that she eventually discontinued this deceptive practice.
Probably the most spectacular example of Lemoine’s title manipula-
tion involves The Strange and Unaccountable Life of Daniel Dancer, Esq.
Who Died in a Sack, Though Worth Upwards of £3000 a Year, ‰rst pub-
lished in 1797. This wonderful example of a provocative chapbook title
provided an incredibly complete, although brief, synopsis of the story,
yet, probably because of the sack reference, gave potential readers an
urge to ‰nd out more. The tale describes a wealthy man and his sister
who both lived like paupers and refused to spend even a penny of their
accumulated riches. Composed of brief anecdotes about the extent of
their miserliness, the story ends when Dancer, about to die, climbs into
an old sack because “having come into this world without a shirt, he was
determined to go out in the same manner, as he brought nothing with
him, he did not think he had any right to carry anything away.”25
Beyond the titillating nature of this story, this chapbook boasts very
little to justify its popularity, which emphasizes Ann Lemoine’s ability
to connect with the imaginations and desires of her readers. The Daniel
Dancer chapbook is not particularly well-written. The writer developed
the characters poorly, stilted the dialogue, and followed a horribly disor-
ganized plot line. As a historical account, there are too many missing
facts with pertinent and speci‰c details being simply nonexistent. There
may be a moral lesson that could be inferred from the story, but the
author does not give a ‰nal summation or oêr any direct advice on how
to avoid the fate of Daniel Dancer. Save for the titillating or darkly amus-
ing aspect of the story, this chapbook should not have been popular. The
highly-descriptive title, however, drove the sales, made this chapbook
hugely successful, and pushed it through at least ‰ve separate revisions.
Lemoine made sure that each revised edition placed a primary focus
upon the story of Daniel Dancer and kept the ‰rst part of the chapbook
title the same. She modi‰ed subsequent revisions by including various
shorter stories at the end. The title of the earliest version of this chap-
25. Anonymous, The Strange and Unaccountable Life of Daniel Dancer, Esq. Who
Died in a Sack, Though Worth Upwards of £3000 a Year (London: Printed by T.
Maiden, Sherbourne-Lane, for Ann Lemoine, 1797), 25.
book included, With Singular Anecdotes of the Famous Jemmy Taylor, the
Southwark Usurer, A Character Well Known Upon the Stock Exchange. To
Which is Added, A True Account of Henry Welby, Who Lived Invisible For-
ty-Four Years in Grub Street; With a Sketch of the Life of the Rev. George
Harvest; Called the Absent Man; or Parson and Player. A later version in
1801 kept the addition of Jemmy Taylor, but deleted the stories of Welby
and Harvest. The addition to the title then included, To Which Are Add-
ed, the Remarkable Life of John Overs; With Some Account of His Daughter,
Who Was the Original Founder of St. Mary Overs’ Church in the Borough;
and, The Origin of London Bridge. The 1803 and later editions removed
the histories and followed a more thematic approach by including the
Remarkable Life of Baron D’Aguilar, with Some Account of his Starvation
Farm. Each edition follows a diêrent thematic approach depending
upon the type of stories included, such as poverty, historical accounts, or
miserliness, in order to appeal to the various interests of potential read-
ers. This adaptability depended entirely upon her keen perception of the
chapbook market and the realization that chapbook readers relied a
great deal upon information provided on the title-page.
An identifying illustration or frontispiece included on the title-page
of most chapbooks, or added in as a separate page, also helped to market
chapbooks to potential readers. The visual advertisement worked in the
same fashion as the title by connecting with the imagination and desires of
readers. Illustrations, varying from crude sketches to elaborate etchings,
had a long association with street literature. The extensive use of rough
or primitive looking woodcuts, starting with early chapbooks in seven-
teenth century and continuing to the time of Lemoine, may be one reason
why a great deal of street literature has been viewed negatively. To be
generous, such simple illustrations have given a number of scholars the
perception that many chapbooks were early forms of children’s litera-
ture. In a harsher light, crude drawings on the covers equated, in the
minds of many critics, to crude literature. While the contents and layout
of a book’s cover, as in the old maxim, may not give any indication of the
quality of the book itself, for chapbooks the frontispiece and title-page
provide a tremendous amount of information not only about how street
vendors sold these little books, but also give some perspective upon why
and how they appealed to chapbook readers of the eighteenth century.
The use of illustrations varied tremendously. Although not every
chapbook had a frontispiece, virtually all publishers preferred instead to
rely upon elaborate titles and descriptions. By today’s standards, chap-
book publishers crowded title-pages and covers with written messages.
Conversely, a few chapbooks, particularly those that dealt with palmis-
try or fortune-telling, typically had quite a number of illustrations not
only on the outside, but also throughout. Simple economics established
and limited the extent oŠlustrations. Artwork added costs that might,
or might not, be recouped. For the chapbook publisher, each chapbook
represented a substantial investment; every other party involved, from
the writer to the printer, was paid prior to the ‰rst sale. By the end of the
eighteenth century, middle- and upper-class book publishers began to
make diêrent contractual arrangements with writers, but for the rest of
the tradesmen involved in book production and for chapbook writers,
their ‰nancial involvement ended well before the sale of the ‰rst copy.
Decisions concerning how elaborate a chapbook looked, therefore, rest-
ed entirely upon chapbook publishers because their investment held the
greatest economic risk.
Historically, then, early chapbooks typically exhibited a crude ap-
pearance because of simple economics. Unlike the book market, there
was never any misrepresentation about the implied quality of street lit-
erature. A wealthy reader enjoyed a wide range of available choices for
reading matter. Even in the seventeenth century, readers discovered that
high price did not assure quality with the existence of both low-priced,
well-written books and over-priced, poorly conceived books. Deciding
which book to buy required some type of criteria on the part of the
buyer, even if only that a book was bound with a certain type or color of
leather. For the economically disadvantaged reader, such choices were
more restricted. The decision for these early readers did not necessarily
concern which chapbook they would buy, but whether they would buy a
chapbook at all. By the 1790s, however, with the increased numbers of
both chapbook publishers and general readership, competition became
a major concern. Readers with little money saw an increasingly larger
selection in reading matter. The growing competitive marketplace
eventually forced chapbook publishers to ‰nd some way to distinguish
their wares from the wares of their competitors.
Chapbook publishers and printers slowly learned one primary crite-
rion for potential readers concerned attractiveness. Even in the early
1790s, a great number of chapbook publishers did not realize chapbook
art held great inŠuence upon sales and so many followed traditional
approaches toward illustration. One of those approaches involved recy-
cled artwork. Once a chapbook publisher or printer purchased an en-
graving, the illustration could certainly be used on more than one project.
But the engraving blocks, almost exclusively made out of wood, had a
limited life span. In some cases, printers used a single engraving block
repeatedly on diêrent chapbooks until it wore out and could no longer
produce a legible image. Another approach employed engraving blocks
that could be modi‰ed for diêrent illustrations. Chapbooks sold at pub-
lic executions typically employed the most common example of modi‰ed
illustrations. Comparable to theater programs, these chapbooks gave
brief biographical accounts, including details of the crimes and some-
times trial transcripts, of those scheduled to be publicly hanged. Be-
cause of the speed needed to produce these chapbooks, chapbook pub-
lishers designed the illustrations on the title-page so that the faceless,
hanging ‰gures could be easily added or subtracted. The visual quality of
chapbooks produced by either of these approaches lacked and eventually
grew less appealing to the growing sophistication of readers. Change, in
regards to the type and use of illustrations, became inevitable.
Lemoine stood at the forefront of this change. She was the ‰rst chap-
book publisher to view the frontispiece not only as an integral part of
the chapbook, but as one of the main means by which potential readers
judged the quality of diêrent chapbooks. Part of this credit, however,
needs to be given to her husband Henry. Just prior to his bankruptcy
and imprisonment, Henry Lemoine had invested in a copperplate
printing business. The later eighteenth century saw quite a number of
inventions pertaining to the printing process, such as chemical relief
etching and lithography, and the use of copper plates for illustrations in
street literature became economically feasible. Once the initial investment
for the press could be overcome, the bene‰ts became immediate. Etch-
ings in copper not only allowed greater detail, but also the useable life-
span of the printing surface lasted much longer than with wood, allow-
ing many more chapbooks to be printed by a single plate. Henry Lemoine
foresaw this change in technology and Ann Lemoine followed through
on it.
Ann Lemoine made full use of this new technology in a number of
ways to create an elegant and recognizable image for her chapbooks.
Mostly due to consistent production choices, by the end of the eigh-
teenth century, each chapbook publisher created a recognizable style
that could be quickly determined by the look and layout of individual
chapbooks. Lemoine quickly recognized how this aspect could increase
her reputation as a chapbook publisher. Early examples of her chap-
books from 1795 indicate that she did not have immediate use of the
copperplate business her husband owned, probably because it had been
sold in order to resolve his debts. Her chapbooks from 1795 and part of
1796 used illustrations printed by wooden engravings. By her second
year in business, however, she associated herself with a well-known cop-
perplate printer named Thomas Maiden and the front of her chapbooks
gained a consistent form in style and layout that more closely resem-
bled higher-priced bound books than competitive chapbooks.
The diêrences that set Ann Lemoine’s chapbooks apart soon be-
came greater in other regards as well, such as in aesthetic choices of
illustrations. Not only did she refrain from reusing engravings, she com-
missioned separate, elaborate frontispieces for each of her chapbooks.
While a few chapbooks published prior to 1790 employed a completely
separate page for an illustration, none came close to achieving the same
level of artistic quality as Lemoine’s. These full-page frontispieces from
her chapbooks exhibited very elaborate details and typically recounted a
dramatic scene from the story. In keeping with the problem of title-
pages providing full disclosure, yet still enticing potential readers, Lem-
oine used the frontispieces to intrigue and titillate. She chose curious
scenes and subtitled them in such a way as to provoke questions from
readers. Some frontispieces were fairly pedestrian, such as “William and
Jane receiving the Hermits blessing.” Others were far more dramatic
and intriguing such as “Alice Arden stabbing the dead body of her hus-
band” or “Albertus takes the child from the dead Almeria and strangles it.”
In all of the revisions of the Daniel Dancer chapbooks, Lemoine used the
exact same frontispiece entitled, “Miss Dancer greeting her brother upon
his good luck in ‰nding a dead sheep upon the common.” This highly
provocative picture of Dancer giving an animal carcass to his sister com-
bined with the inscription immediately prompts the viewer to question
how long the sheep has been dead and the extent of its decomposition.
Lemoine based a good number of her chapbook ideas from trends
she observed in the higher-priced book trade. In this respect, her pub-
lishing techniques not only surpassed other chapbook publishers, but
her innovative use of technology challenged all but the most sophisti-
cated book publishers. During the late eighteenth century, the printing
Illus. 3: AU: Please provide a caption for this pair of images.

industry was not only experimenting with ways to speed up the printing
process, but also looking for a method to allow the easy replication of
colored illustrations. Prior to this point, illustrations were painstakingly
drawn by hand and added an enormous amount to the ‰nal price of a
book. In 1768, Jean Baptiste Le Prince, a French painter, invented a way
to use acid to etch copper plates for printing. This aquatint process al-
lowed prints to be made with tonal gradations. Combined with colored
inks and repeated stampings, printers were now provided with a de-
pendable method to include colored illustrations in books. The colored
aquatint process replicated the majority of the drawing, although the
resulting image still required a colorist to add the ‰nal touch-ups by
hand.26
At a time when very few printers were even familiar with such a
process, Lemoine used this cutting-edge technology for her 1802 chap-
book, The Black Forest; or, The Cavern of Horrors, which was available
with a standard black and white frontispiece for four pence or, for two
pence more, with color. In order to produce these colored illustrations,
Lemoine developed long-lasting business relationships with several art-
ists who were given credit on many of her chapbooks. They included S.
Sharpe, I. Ray, and I. Lee, engravers; and W. G., a draftsman. She was
the ‰rst chapbook publisher to use colored illustrations and, for many
years, the only one oêring colored editions. Eventually, others such as
James Kendrew followed her example. Kendrew, a chapbook publisher
who worked in London from 1803 to 1841, however, was unwilling, or
‰nancially unable, to give the same attention to quality. For his colored
chapbooks, he “employed his daughter and other female relatives to co-
lour plates and valentines for him.”27 Because of this, James Kendrew
never achieved the same level of success as Lemoine. Her professional
approach to chapbook production established a solid foundation on which
she built her reputation in the trade.
Lemoine also achieved success in the chapbook industry because of
the unusual, for the time, business choices she made. Traditionally, after
a run of chapbooks was printed and oêred for sale, the remaining stock
was burned in order to make room for new editions. By today’s stan-
dards, such practices may seem extravagant and wasteful, but during the
26. Martin Hardie, English Coloured Books (London: Methuen, 1906), 87–95.
27. Victor Neuburg, The Penny Histories (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World,
1969), 18.
eighteenth century, chapbook printers and publishers considered stor-
age costs above the cost of the chapbooks. Everyone, of course, consid-
ered chapbooks as cheap literature. Lemoine did not agree with this
idea. She compiled thematic selections of various overruns into larger
books in order to take advantage of the collecting impulse of wealthier
buyers. A number of chapbook collectors, such as James Boswell and his
son Alexander, paid to have compilations made for them. Lemoine is
the only known chapbook publisher who thought to create chapbook
collections for prospective buyers. Some of these compilations became
hugely popular. Of her most famous compilation, Wild Roses, one reader
recalled in 1862 that it was “a volume the delight of our boyhood, and
still most precious from early associations.”28 Besides Wild Roses, Lem-
oine produced a number of chapbook compilations including, The Tell-
Tale Magazine; or, Universal Museum (1803); English Nights Entertain-
ments (1802); The New Mentor (1802); The Pocket Navigator (1806); and
The Little Tale Teller; or, Simple Stories (1810).
Although Ann Lemoine made her chapbook compilations from over-
runs, there are a number of indications that she planned for a compila-
tion prior to releasing individual chapbooks. Some chapbooks were
clearly labeled on the title-page as belonging to a particular series, such
as Tell-Tale Magazine or English Nights Entertainment. In some in-
stances, Lemoine planned for the exact position of certain chapbooks in
later compilations. Quite a few single chapbooks exhibit an odd page
numbering system. Even though the pages are consecutively numbered,
the numbering does not start with “one.” For example, a sixteen-page
chapbook may be numbered from page forty-nine to page sixty-four.
When this odd feature has been noted by critics in the past, it was
blamed as a printing error. On the contrary, these page numbers in an
original chapbook designated its eventual placement in a compilation.
Overruns of the sixteen-page chapbook example would have ended up
as the fourth chapbook in a compiled book. Since the individual chap-
books were meant to be disposable, proper numbering was more impor-
tant for the book format, which appealed to the more discriminating
buyers. This extensive planning for a chapbook series, however, was rare,
even for Ann Lemoine. In The Little Tale Teller; or, Simple Stories, Ann
Lemoine used a more common printing technique. The compilation
contains twelve sixteen-page chapbooks. The pages for every individual
28. George Herbert, “Forgotten Novels,” Dublin University Magazine (1862): 343.
chapbook, except the last, are consecutively numbered one through six-
teen. The ‰nal page of the last chapbook is designated as page 192, rep-
resenting the correct number of pages in the compilation. This loose
numbering system allowed for last-minute substitutions. The ‰nal limit
of 192 pages also permitted diêrent combinations of chapbook sizes
since the number was divisible by the most common chapbook length of
sixteen, twenty-four, and thirty-two pages. Ann Lemoine used a similar
technique with a ‰nal page limit of 288 in other compilations such as
English Nights Entertainment.
During the eighteenth century, very little diêrence existed between
a chapbook series and a periodical, except semantics. If a reader could
depend upon the release of forthcoming issues in a thematically cen-
tered series, then that series should be termed a periodical. Critic Rob-
ert Mayo, however, is very speci‰c in determining that “only about nine
periodicals specializing in prose ‰ction were published in the three quar-
ters of a century from 1740-1815.”29 Of these nine, which includes Ann
Lemoine’s Tell-Tale Magazine, Mayo further declares that none of the
periodicals published either original ‰ction or new English translations
of foreign works.30 From a historical standpoint, a clear determination
cannot always be made whether a particular chapbook compilation was
released on a periodical basis or compiled afterwards. In considering the
ways in which Lemoine planned her chapbook compilations, certainly
English Nights Entertainments should be included on the list and, quite
possibly, her four other chapbook compilations. Evidence also exists
that chapbook compilations by her husband including The Conjuror’s
Magazine or, Magical and Physiognomical Mirror (1791); Wonderful Mag-
azine; or, New Repository of Wonders (1793); or The Eccentric Magazine; or,
Live and Portraits of Remarkable Persons (1812), should be included as
well. Since late eighteenth-century periodicals that specialized in prose
‰ction gave birth to both the short story format and today’s literary
magazines, a closer examination of the details concerning Ann Lem-
oine’s Tell-Tale Magazine is warranted.
Mayo’s broad generalization that eighteenth-century prose ‰ction pe-
riodicals did not include original works is not only unsubstantiated, but
also full of literary bias. He claims that the audience for Lemoine’s Tell-
29. Robert D. Mayo, The English Novel in the Magazines, 1740–1815 (London:
Northwestern University Press, 1962), 363.
30. Ibid., 363.
Tale Magazine was “less discriminating” and that “many of their readers,
one suspects, were schoolboys and girls.”31 Originality is hard to prove
for any text, and an argument could be made that a good redaction
shows as much artistic merit as a lengthier piece. So far, though, only
eleven out of the eighty-three tales in Tell-Tale Magazine have been
found to be redactions of larger works. The greater majority of tales
were written speci‰cally for this series. While a few of the stories would
have appealed to children, such as the retelling of Dick Whittington
and his cat in Tale 42, or the “Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor” in
Tale 5, other tales are targeted towards a broader audience.
The story line for one tale should serve as evidence that Lemoine
strove for broader audiences. “The Eastern Turret,” Tale 56, is a compli-
cated story of jealousy between two brothers, the sons of a wealthy Mar-
quis, who pursue the same woman, Correlia. The elder brother, Adol-
phus, truly loves Correlia, while the younger brother, Oswald, only seeks
to possess her. In a quick series of events, Adolphus marries Correlia
and the newlyweds have a baby, which enrages Oswald. Oswald then
murders Adolphus, has Correlia imprisoned in the eastern turret of the
castle, and fosters the child, Ferdinand, out to a poor farmer in the next
county. Ferdinand comes of age, returns to the castle, and falls in love
with the caretaker’s daughter, Bertha. Ferdinand then meets his mother
and learns not only his true identity, but that he has a sister as well, who
is, of course, Bertha. Ferdinand and Bertha plot an elaborate revenge
against Oswald and ‰nally have him arrested on the charge of murder.
The story ends with Correlia admiring the “Providence which had re-
stored them to each other, to aŒuence, and peace.”32 Such a story, particu-
larly with the romantic and political overtones, would not be restricted
to juvenile readers, but would have appealed to a more mature audience.
The Tell-Tale Magazine included quite of number of romances similar
to “The Eastern Turret.” The full title of the chapbook series, The Tell-
Tale Magazine; or, Universal Museum. Consisting of a Series of Interesting
Adventures, Voyages, Histories, Lives, Tales, and Romances, indicates that
Lemoine intended to reach a broad, general audience and not merely
“schoolboys and girls.”33
31. Ibid., 368.
32. Anonymous, The Eastern Turret; or, Orphan of Navona. A Romance (London:
Printed by T. Maiden, Sherbourne-Lane, for Ann Lemoine, 1804), 27.
33. Mayo, 368.
In at least one case, Lemoine combined original work with an older,
well-known work, a strategic publishing maneuver that allowed her to
promote certain texts to new audiences and merge the popularity of
well-known writers with her own reputation. Tale 62 reprinted William
Cowper’s comic verse, “The Diverting History of John Gilpin,” which
was originally published in 1782, but Ann Lemoine’s chapbook also in-
cluded two response poems by John Oakman and her ex-husband,
Henry Lemoine. Once critic, in reference to Henry Lemoine’s poetic
tale of John Gilpin’s wife, says, “Lemoine, if not a genius, was a man of
such considerable talent, and so typical of the versatile bookseller of the
eighteenth century, that his work excites more curiosity than the mod-
ern reader can easily satisfy.”34 Carver’s praise may be extreme, but, un-
like Mayo, he does recognize the originality of the tale.
Even though Robert Mayo wrote his criticism of the Tell-Tale Mag-
azine in 1962, other modern scholars continue to use his dated and mis-
leading research to substantiate their own work. In 2004, Franz J. Potter
based a portion of his ‰ndings on Mayo and erroneously claimed that
Ann Lemoine started the Tell-Tale Magazine, “probably employing Sa-
rah Wilkinson as its editor.”35 In both Potter’s and Mayo’s eyes, Wilkin-
son was the creative force behind Lemoine’s chapbook series. Nothing
could be further from the truth. Mayo claims that Wilkinson wrote ten
tales for the Lemoine series36 and Potter claims that she wrote sixteen.37
In actuality, Wilkinson wrote fourteen of the eighty-three tales, hardly
an overwhelming percentage. Tracing Wilkinson’s authorship in the Tell-
Tale Magazine is fairly straightforward, since she was very meticulous in
appending her name to her work. Wilkinson started her writing career
in 1803 and was eager for recognition. Consider the twenty-second chap-
book in the series, which contained three tales. Instead of only putting
her name on the title-page of the chapbook, Wilkinson asked for her
name to be credited after the title of each individual tale. Chapbook
twenty-nine of the series also has three tales, but only two are credited
34. P. L. Carver, “A Continuation of John Gilpin,” The Review of English Stud-

ies 8 (1932): 206.
AU: is the 35. Franz J. Potter, “Introduction,” Romances and Gothic Tales by Anonymous,
place 1801 (Camarillo, CA: Zittaw Press, 2004), 5.
Carmarillo
36. Mayo, 368.
or Concord?
37. Ibid., 18.
to Wilkinson. Since Wilkinson fostered a more public image than Le-
moine, critics have tended to give Wilkinson more credit than she de-
served. Franz Potter, without any foundation, claims that Wilkinson
wrote Tale 57 of the Tell-Tale Magazine, “The Life of an Authoress,”
and that the story was Wilkinson’s autobiography.38 Actually, the tale
has more in common with the 1799 novel by Mary Hays entitled Victim
of Prejudice than with any factual account of Wilkinson’s life, as indicat-
ed by her 1821 application to the Royal Literary Fund.
Lemoine, unlike many other chapbook publishers of the time, re-
peatedly proved her willingness to give formal credit for anyone involved
in the production of her chapbooks, including writers. Between 1803
and 1806, Wilkinson wrote a total of eighteen chapbooks for Lemoine.
During this time, Wilkinson also wrote stories for at least ‰ve other
chapbook publishers, including Simon Fisher, John Ker, Thomas Hughes,
Mace, and Kaygill. A close, creative relationship between Wilkinson
and Lemoine did not exist. When Wilkinson’s big break came in 1806
with her ‰rst novel, The Thatched Cottage; or, Sorrows of Eugenia, she
published the novel with the help of a subscription list. According to the
list of one hundred and ‰fty-four subscribers to Wilkinson’s new novel,
however, Lemoine did not ‰nancially support Wilkinson’s venture into
novel writing. From her position as a chapbook publisher, she probably
provided many beginning writers the opportunity to experiment and
develop their craft. The overwhelming majority of those writers re-
mained unrecognized in the chapbook business, while some moved on
to other ‰elds. Lemoine realized early that the chapbook trade, unlike
the tendencies of the more recognizable and more distinguished book
trade, centered upon the interests and desires of the readers instead of
the writers. She acknowledged and gave credit for artistic expression,
but the focus of her chapbooks remained on her potential audience. For
writers who wanted to write what readers wanted to read, Ann Lemoine
gave them that opportunity.
Because Lemoine did not create and maintain a highly public image,
unlike her husband, historians and literary critics have either over-
looked her contributions to the book trade or, more seriously, have mis-
attributed many of her accomplishments to others. As an inŠuential
woman publisher, she facilitated the work of others in order to produce
38. Ibid., 18.
popular reading material for over twenty years. Through her ability to
target reader’s interests and her employment of new methods to print
chapbooks, she became the largest chapbook publisher in London at the
end of the eighteenth century. Many scholars argue that by the 1820s,
the era of chapbooks ended; however, small booklets continued to be
printed, even to today, in great numbers. Lemoine’s changes in both
content and form of the chapbook blurred any lingering demarcations
between formats. Ann Lemoine developed chapbooks into a more so-
phisticated format until they bore little resemblance to the cheaply pro-
duced pamphlets sold by chapmen of the earlier century.

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Chapbooks and the Lemoines 283

A History of Guilty Pleasure: Chapbooks

C hapbooks were small, paper bound books sold by peddlers, itin-

Roy Bearden-White (14439 Corinth Road, Marion, IL 62959) is a Ph.D. student in

PBSA 103:3 (2009): 283–318

2. Charles A. Federer, Yorkshire Chap-Books (London: Elliot Stock, 1889), 7.

Illus. 3: AU: Please provide a caption for this pair of images.

34. P. L. Carver, “A Continuation of John Gilpin,” The Review of English Stud-

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