A History of Guilty Pleasure: Chapbooks and the Lemoines

Chapbooks and the Lemoines 283

PBSA 103:3 (2009): 283–318

Roy Bearden-White (14439 Corinth Road, Marion, IL 62959) is a Ph.D. student inEnglish Literature at Southern Illinois University. His primary research interests are ineighteenth-century British literature, book history, and the history of the novel. He hasrecently published an article in the International Journal of Comic Art, which theorizesways meaning is gained through reading graphic novels.

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 andimperceptible objects, than by such as by their magnitude ingross our whole

attention for a while.1

Chapbooks 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 andtypically sold for less than a shilling apiece. As the successor to previousstreet literature, such as the popular broadsheets, jest-books, and balladsof the Elizabethan age, the subject matter of these chapbooks variedgreatly. Chapbooks could consist of song lyric compilations, children’sstories, 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 thepeople, 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. JohnWalker (London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme, and Brown, Pater-noster-Row; and Munday and Slatter, Oxford, 1811), 434. This article originallyappeared in the October 1790 issue of Gentleman’s Magazine.

Bibliographical Society of America284

gauged.”2 The “common bent” became a pro‰table source for chapmenduring the eighteenth century as more and more chapbooks were printed.

Chapbooks, also called libels in the seventeenth century, constitutean important part of our literary history. As Samuel Pepys recounted inthe epitaph to his early chapbook collection:

Though some make slight of Libels; yet you may see by them, how the Windsits. As take a straw, and throw it up into the Air; you shall see by that, whichway the Wind is; which you shall not do, by casting up Stone. More Solid thingsdo 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 andorders. They expressed the interests and the passions that, many times,diêred with those of the ruling class. They established a historicalrecord 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 textsto mere footnote status through an uneven, and undeserved, criticism oftheir aesthetic worth while ignoring the greater social contributions ofchapbooks.

From the very beginning, those who stood in a position to evaluateliterature viewed chapbooks with both disdain and distaste. As withmost popular ‰ction, scholars perceived chapbooks as poorly written, ifnot outright plagiarized, by hack writers more driven by an interest inobtaining a quick pro‰t than inspired by any artistic muse. Before the1970s, the overwhelming majority of literary critics simply discountedany 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 theharsh judgment of chapbooks. A few canonical authors bridged theseformats and not only wrote chapbooks, but published them as well.When Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote The Watchman series in 1796, hepublished them in the chapbook format. Moreover, the reading publicinstantly recognized and identi‰ed Coleridge’s work as a chapbook se-ries. During the late 1790s, when Sir Alexander Boswell expanded thechapbook 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. Theonly barrier between such highly regarded periodicals as The Rambler orThe Idler and non‰ction-oriented chapbooks exists within subjectivecritical opinion. Artists, like Coleridge, used chapbooks as a means ofsocial commentary in the same way that Samuel Johnson used his week-ly periodicals. Chapbook series did indeed diêr from periodicals in thefrequency of issues, though not necessarily in regularity. Even thoughpublishers 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 asThomas Spence’s The End of Oppression, deserve equal critical attention.

The designation of literary quality, however, implies a subjectiveevaluation based upon criteria that may or may not be either openlyacknowledged or even relevant. A more realistic argument can establishthe merit of chapbooks through two complicated and related questions.First, does the medium of the chapbook contain the potential of artisticexpression, or more directly, is it possible that some chapbooks wereactually well written? Second and more important, to what extent didchapbook 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 afamiliar 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 thechapbook trade some scholars unwittingly employed revisionism whendescribing the historical origins of the modern short story. Many eigh-teenth-century chapbook writers from London would be very surprised tolearn from Ann Charters, a well-known critic, that “In the early nineteenthcentury, German writers were the ‰rst to develop original, imaginative

4. The James Boswell Chapbook Collection is housed at the Child MemorialLibrary 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 potentialfor artistic expression, therefore, de‰nitely existed within the chapbookformat.

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 ‰ndingsshould not be surprising. A few chapbook writers, however, achievedhigher literary goals. One of the best ways to illustrate this fact withoutthe bias of subjectivity involves highlighting the literary inŠuence ofchapbooks upon canonical writers. As William St. Clair argues in TheReading Nation in the Romantic Period, knowledge of prior reading ma-terial can greatly inform an understanding of the ways in which cultureevolves, including how new literature is created. Many well-known andhighly respected eighteenth and nineteenth-century authors, such asJohn 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 readchapbooks but also later recalled their reading experiences with greatfondness.6 Most of these experiences, of course, are situated during theirformative years because of the stigmatizing inŠuence popular ‰ctionheld. 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 oneignorant enough not to know what those dear darling volumes, so designatedfrom their covers, contain, be it known, that they are or were to be bought forsixpence, and embodied stories of haunted castles, bandits, murderers, and othergrim 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 fodderthat later germinated in the minds of many writers. The variety of sto-ries that Medwin relates stimulated the imagination and motivatedmany eventually to create their own stories. To emphasize this measureof inŠuence, most of the biographical accounts that detailed similar fa-vorable reading experiences almost unanimously agreed on one otherpoint — the way they read chapbooks. Nineteenth-century writers whopreviously 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 inhis semi-factual work, Sartor Resartus: The Life and Opinions of HerrTeufelsdrockh, 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 theyoung head furnished with a considerable miscellany of things and shadows ofthings: 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 somethingdiêrent away from the experience. Medwin focused on the actual sto-ries and the action of the characters while Carlyle’s “miscellany” tried todescribe the less tangible aspects.

Even though chapbooks contributed greatly to the formation of laterliterary works, tracing the inŠuence of chapbooks through the writtenworks of other writers poses a problem of subjectivity. Fortunately, theinherent problem of establishing the origins of artistic ideas can be avoid-ed altogether since the “living pabulum” of chapbook literature can bediscovered in a number of alternative directions. William Wordsworthmakes direct reference to his childhood experience of reading chapbooksin the poem entitled “Books” in his major work, The Prelude. He says,

Oh! give us once again the wishing-capOf 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 reapOne 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. Heengaged so deeply in the reading experience that chapbooks made himforget his own existence, and metaphorically, chapbooks consumed him.In describing one of the greatest characteristics of prose ‰ction, that oftransporting the reader beyond the physical limitations of ordinary life,Wordsworth extolled the merits of a literary format that many academiccritics have since designated as worthless.

Typically, scholars also distinguished demarcations between literarygenres in order to better understand general trends and characteristics,but writers, even chapbook writers, have historically experimented withthe perceived boundaries of their craft. Many late-eighteenth-centurychapbooks could be quickly categorized as part of standard Gothic fare,although the designation of others requires a deeper analysis of the genre’sde‰ning terms. Not all chapbook writers followed formulaic rules. Evenwith this consideration, the simplistic classi‰cation of all late-eigh-teenth-century chapbooks as prose ‰ction still neglects approximately42 percent of the chapbook trade (see Table 1). Chapbook authors usedtheir medium for a great number of purposes beyond story-telling orsocial commentary. In one particular case, an author employed thechapbook format as the means to develop and present part of his currentresearch to the public, similar to the way in which today’s scholars com-pose articles for academic journals. In 1798, Ann Lemoine published NewArt of Swimming. With Dr. Franklin’s Directions to Swimmers, and Dr.Buchan’s Advice on River and Sea-Bathing, but Alexander Peter Buchan, awell-respected doctor of medicine from London, probably conductedthe major portion of writing, editing, and layout for this chapbook. Ofthe 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 TheArt of Swimming, originally written by Melchisédech Thévenot in thelate 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.


not contain a redaction, but the exact opposite. Dr. Buchan did notcomplete his longer work, Treatise on Sea-Bathing, with Remarks on theUse of the Warm Bath, until 1801, a full three years later. The Buchanarticle that appeared in the 1798 Lemoine chapbook constituted an earlydraft of his ongoing research. Buchan also redacted the works by Frank-lin and Thévenot as part of his historical survey of the use of waterimmersion as a therapeutic technique. In this case, a chapbook not onlydisplayed the original work by Dr. Buchan, but also became a tool whichhelped to inspire and develop further writing.

In truth, the number of diêrent manners in which chapbook writersapproached their format and used the medium to express their artisticviewpoint, 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, personalaccounts, and other documents, production numbers may very well beestimated in millions. The production of one single chapbook, ThomasPaine’s Rights of Man, has been estimated between four and ‰ve hundred

table 1Distribution of Ann Lemoine Chapbooks According to Content*

Religious and Moral. 2Household Manuals. 2Historical, Political, and Biographical. 4Travel and Adventure. 16Odd Characters and Strange Events. 12Prose Fiction. 117Legendary Romances, Fairy Stories, and

Folk Tales in Verse. 11Dramatic. 1Metrical Tales and other Verse. 2Song Books. 15Jest Books, Humorous Fiction, Riddles, etc. 2Humorous Metrical Tales. 2Occult. 7Crimes and Criminals 6Miscellaneous: 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.


thousand copies.10 Unfortunately, a great number of chapbooks havenot 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 somecases, chapbooks were sold as a single sheet of paper; the buyer was thenexpected 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 dueto their small size, their sometimes crude, but quaint, illustrations, ortheir provocative use of sensational titles, that has endeared them tocollectors. Because of this, there are numerous collections still extant,such as the Pepys Collection, the James Boswell collection, and thechapbook 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 andEuropean, 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 Corveywho is involved in indexing and analyzing the materials located in theCorvey Library. In an eôrt to recreate a historical portrait of the Goth-ic chapbook trade, Koch presented “bibliographic details of 217 Gothicbluebooks scattered throughout twenty-one national, academic, andprivate libraries in the British Isles, North America, and Germany.”11

From an analysis of her results, Ann Lemoine published 60 of the 217chapbooks, a full 27 percent. Since the next leading publisher, Tegg andCastleman, only accounted for 32 chapbooks, Ann Lemoine easily ledthe industry and published more chapbooks than any other publisher inLondon 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 BibliographicalChecklist 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 ofculture formation and other historical questions. Such a study will re-quire an examination of the full extent and range of Ann Lemoine’schapbooks. Unfortunately, no known production records exist. This isnot 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 severaldeductions can be made. Because Lemoine was the most proli‰c chap-book publisher of her time, even though chapbooks in general were notdesigned to be kept beyond the ‰rst few readings, numerous collectionshave carefully preserved copies of her publications. Virtually every ma-jor library in North America owns at least one Lemoine chapbook. Bycollating listings from various library card catalogues and other sources, arecord of Ann Lemoine’s publishing history can be reconstructed. Aworking database was created by collecting listings available throughthe open-access, online catalogues of the one-hundred and twenty-three member libraries of the Association of Research Libraries.12 Inaddition, listings were gathered from the OCLC WorldCat database,the online British and Bodleian library catalogues, and through cataloguesof the second-hand book market, particularly ABE books. From thisresearch, 201 Ann Lemoine chapbooks have been preserved (see Fig. 2).

By examining this basic pool of data, the total number of separatechapbooks published by Lemoine can be estimated to have been around400 titles. This extrapolation is based upon several clues discoveredwithin the compiled listing. One of these is the Heart of Oak serieswhich was an annual compilation of popular song lyrics. The oldestextant edition of the series was published in 1802, but Lemoine subtitledthe 1813 as the “Sixteenth Annual Collection,” so apparently she beganthis series shortly after she set up shop in 1797. Later annual editionsafter 1813 may exist, but if so, none have survived. Of the sixteen knownannuals, only nine have been preserved, slightly more than half. Anoth-er clue involves the chapbook compilation set Popular Tales, Lives, andAdventures. Lemoine discovered that she could take advantage of theupscale book market through chapbook compilations. She based the

12. The database is available online at http://mypage.siu.edu/roywhite/Lemoine.html.


compilations around a theme, such as sea adventures or children’s sto-ries, and bound together a small collection of chapbooks with a hardcover. Typically, Lemoine designed, and fortunately labeled, these com-pilations as multi-volume sets. Even though she planned for PopularTales, 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 NightsEntertainments, Lemoine evidenced that she planned well in advancefor the publication of this compilation since, for a number of the includ-ed chapbooks, she appended the cococococompilatiompilatiompilatiompilatiompilation title n title n title n title n title above the individualchapbook 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, copiesof roughly half of all Lemoine chapbooks have survived, providing anoverall total of slightly more than four hundred chapbooks.

In comparison to novel production during the same time period, theresults are staggering. According to James Raven in Judging NewWealth, “By 1800 some ninety new novels were published annually. Atthe same date, total annual novel publication, including reprints,amounted to well over 150 titles.”13 Raven’s statistics, however, do notsingle 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.

Fig. 2: Known number of dated chapbooks printed for Ann Lemoine. There are 10Ann Lemoine chapbooks that are yet to be dated. Chapbook compilations are notincluded in numbers.

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and distributed their wares on the streets of London during this sametime period, accounted for thirty-‰ve known separate titles and work-ing from previously established assumptions may have accounted for asmany as seventy diêrent chapbooks. Production runs of separate chap-book editions varied greatly, although printings of up to four thousandcopies were not at all unusual. Paine’s The Rights of Man was mentionedearlier.14 Hannah More’s ‰rst chapbook for the Cheap Repository TractSociety, printed in 1795, sold more than one million copies in a singleyear. 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, Williamand Robert Chambers produced a weekly chapbook containing short‰ctional stories “devoted to wholesome popular instruction blendedwith original amusing matter,” which boasted a circulation of 80,000copies.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 uponthe 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, printerand bookseller, the importance of the Lemoines to the chapbook indus-try is indisputable.

Even though the chapbook industry as a whole, because of the hugepopularity of the medium, held such inŠuence over public debate, indi-viduals within the trade often did not recognize the precarious positionthey occupied. Very few chapbook publishers successfully navigated re-peated crossings of those social categories. Collectively, that part of theprinting industry that dealt with popular street literature survived andeventually grew stronger. Individually, however, chapbook publishers didnot fare as well. The story of Henry and Ann Lemoine details the moresuccessful chapbook publishers of the later eighteenth century. Betweenthem, 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 andwhat 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 scopeof this paper. History tends to document those individuals who ownedeither inŠuence or money. The Lemoines owned neither. They belongedto the working class of London and, as such, left behind few clues con-cerning their life’s work. Fortunately, Henry Lemoine created an imageof himself as an eccentric that was perpetuated by both his peers and hiscritics. Anecdotes about his life circulated through various magazines ofthe early nineteenth century. Some writers correctly portrayed this im-portant chapbook writer and publisher while others merely recountedfalse and demeaning rumors. As one critic recently observed about Hen-ry Lemoine, “the Dickensian ups and downs of his career only reŠectthe realities of the publishing system, its opportunities on the one handand 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 thebuying and selling of old books. Often, the simplistic view of specializedtrades 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 whichhe categorized street vendors by the merchandise they sold. Mayhewsubdivided booksellers into precise occupations such as “Street-sellersof Pocket-books and Diaries” and “Street-sellers of Almanacs and Memo-randum-books.”18 While his work provides an important, and muchneeded, view into the lives of the working classes, his description of theoccupational organization of the London lower classes deceptivelystrati‰ed labor categories. Booksellers, as with most street vendors,focused more on surviving than in staying within the arbitrary boundariesof their craft. Along with books, Lemoine oêred his customers medicinesand 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. ThomasMarryat.19 In this respect, Lemoine simply followed the long traditionof chapmen of selling triŠes and baubles, such as ribbons and gloves, aswell as chapbooks. Finances often forced chapmen and booksellers tosell non-book related items in order to maintain their book trade.

During his years as a bookseller, Henry Lemoine not only publishedand sold chapbooks, he also wrote poetry, ‰ction, as well as critical es-says on the book trades. He began serveral popular magazines, such asThe Conjuror’s Magazine; or, Magical and Physiognomical Mirror and TheEccentric 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 theVulgar Herbs of this Nation. He was even moderately successful with therelease of a four-volume novel, The Kentish Curate; or, The History ofLamuel Lyttleton, a Foundling and other original works, such as ModernManhood; 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 ofPrinting. Like most people involved in the book trades, Henry Lemoineconstantly 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 thepitfalls inherent in the book trades.

Most accounts of Lemoine simply say that he “gave up shopkeepingin 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 thathe continued to sell “bug water” to support himself and his family. Theamount, and quality, of his writings increased. His reputation as a knowl-edgeable printer and bookseller rose quickly, and a number of well-readpublications mentioned his works.21 Within the world of literature, he‰nally made the right contacts and verged on moving into the morevisible 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.


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respectable realm of literature, but Henry Lemoine began to do justthat. Since Henry, like many other chapbook writers, viewed the indus-try as a whole, an increase in his writing reputation necessitated hisgrowth as a bookseller as well.

The means of distributing chapbooks diêred greatly from those usedby the larger book trade and reŠected the economic limitations that thelower ranks and orders of society experienced. Lemoine sold his waresfrom a bookstall and not a shop. There are a number of diêrences be-tween the two types of establishments; the most notable is the physicalaspect. Bookstalls were sectioned areas within a larger space similar to anopen-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 levelwith a shop owner. Typically, however, stall merchants depended whollyupon their own time and labor or that of their family members to run thebusiness. Normally, they did not have employees in the same sense thatsome shop owners did. No mention or record that Lemoine ever took onapprentices exists, so, when he pursued other interests such as writing orprinting, his bookstall would be closed. In all likelihood, his wife workedfor some time in his bookstall which may be where she learned aboutthe chapbook industry. Another option existed for street merchants thatappealed to both well-established sellers and those newly started. Mer-chants could sub-lease their space and allow others to sell items in theirname. In the stall owners’ absence, the sub-leasers could operate out ofthe space, but when the stall owners required the space, sub-leasers wouldhave to sell their wares by wandering through the streets of London.

The ability to oêr credit during this time separated street vendorsfrom merchants operating from a permanent shop and, by extension,reŠected the perceived diêrence between the chapbook trade and theelite book world. Wandering chapbook sellers depended upon eithercash transactions or easily transferred barters since they did not have theluxury 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 oêrcredit meant both success and stability. Henry Lemoine, like many oth-ers in the book trade, oêred credit to his customers, but he went onestep further and also extended credit to other booksellers, an act whichquickly led to his eventual ‰nancial ruin.


As a printer and writer, as well as a bookseller, Lemoine occupied asecure position from which he could inŠuence both society at large andother members of the chapbook trade. He could not only provide a newbookseller with a place to operate from, but he could also supply the newmerchant with chapbooks to sell. This arrangement probably appealedto Henry on two distinct levels. Lemoine could earn pro‰t from twoseparate, but related, directions, and he could also inaugurate someonenew into the inner mysteries of the book trades, which appeared as oneof 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 sucha large sum of money as £129 on hand. The failure of the two booksellersto 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 didnot operate his business any diêrently. Lemoine probably owned morethan this amount in hard assets, but he did not have the cash Šow tocover this loss. When his debts came due he simply could not pay themand subsequently was incarcerated in debtor’s prison. Lemoine’s careerin the chapbook trade portrayed the continual and precarious balancebetween 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 ‰rstfemale chapbook publisher began.

Henry Lemoine’s imprisonment was almost certainly the impetus forAnn Lemoine to start her publishing career. It is unknown whether shedivorced her husband after his incarceration.although it is certain theybecame estranged from each other over the incident. She may haveviewed Lemoine’s failed business arrangement as the last in a long seriesof marital transgressions. She may have also wanted to distance herselffrom the public shame that her husband brought upon the family, or as a‰nancial maneuver, orchestrated either with or without her husband’sassistance, in order to build a barrier that would protect herself and hertwo children against economic ruin. Regardless of the speci‰c detailsconcerning their separation, the timing of Ann Lemoine’s entry intochapbook publishing, in 1795, was fortuitous. With the release of Ann


Radcliê’s hugely popular The Mysteries of Udolpho the year before andthe impending release of Matthew Lewis’s The Monk in 1796, the crazefor 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 farmore than just an interesting name.

Ann Lemoine possessed an uncanny ability to understand the desiresof potential chapbook readers and used that knowledge to improve andforever change the chapbook format. In many cases, she rejected thetraditional model of the chapbook trade and experimented with diêr-ent approaches to design and produce her small booklets. Although shepublished reading material for the lower orders, she modeled her chap-books after the more expensive book trade. She did not believe that thelower orders wanted or deserved a lower order of chapbooks. Her con-tributions to the chapbook industry positively shifted the way in whichboth publishers and readers viewed popular reading material. Above allelse, she became the ‰rst fully independent female publisher in En-gland. Between the years of 1795 and 1820, she published well over fourhundred separate chapbooks. She may have written a good number ofthe chapbooks herself, but she also employed one of the most popularchapbook writers of the time, Sarah Wilkinson. A great many of thesechapbooks 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 ofher competitors. Through this venture, she experimented with almostevery aspect of chapbook compilation and production and became themost popular and creative chapbook publisher of the late eighteenthcentury. Since Lemoine readily experimented with all aspects of content,production, and marketing, both her publishing successes and failuresprovide valuable insights into the minds of eighteenth-century readers.

Lemoine began her publishing venture almost by default, and likeother publishers of street literature, she relied heavily upon the adviceand work of others. In her case, the inŠuence of her husband greatlydetermined her early publication choices. Her ‰rst chapbook, publishedin 1795 and entitled, The Facetious Story of John Gilpin; His Going Fartherthan he Intended, and Returning Home Safe at Last. By Mr. Cowper, and a


Second Part; Containing an Account of the Disastrous Accidents which Befelhis Wife, on her Return to London. By Henry Lemoine. To which Is Added,Gilpin’s Second Holiday. Written by the Late John Oakman, consisted oftwenty-four pages and sold for fourpence. The fact her ex-husbandwrote 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 letterprinted in the Gentleman’s Magazine, dated 17 June 1795, Henry Lem-oine gave his return address as White Rose Court, the same locationfrom which Ann Lemoine published all of her chapbooks. He alsoanonymously authored a number of Ann Lemoine chapbooks. HenryLemoine, however, did not intend to completely hide his identity sincehe did leave a number of clues in his writing. In the 1798 chapbook, TheLife and Mysterious Transactions of Richard Morris, Esq. Better Known bythe Name of Dick Spot, the Conjuror, Particularly in Derbyshire and Shrop-shire. Written by an Old Acquaintance, not only does the author refer tohimself as a “jew bookmaker,”22 a reference to his continued associationwith David Levi, but makes direct reference to a letter he received aseditor 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’sChronicle. Both New Lights from the World of Darkness; or, The MidnightMessenger as well as Laugh When you Can; or, The Monstrous Droll Jesterexhibits Henry Lemoine’s writing style. Out of more than two hundredchapbooks, however, Henry Lemoine authored only ‰ve and, between1803 and 1812, printed seven.

Regardless of whatever means allowed Ann Lemoine to start herchapbook business, she achieved her success because of her own skill inestablishing and maintaining proper relationships with chapbook writ-ers, printers, and booksellers and by predicting what the buying publicwanted to read. Like her husband, she crossed a number of social cate-gories. The boundaries she crossed, however, involved her career outsidethe traditional gender role for women in the eighteenth century. Amongthe lower classes, women lacked career opportunities. As one scholarnotes, “the societies of early modern Europe placed strict limits on theexercise 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 controlledby men.”24 Women simply did not hold positions of power within Lon-don’s business community at the turn of the century. This makes AnnLemoine’s case all the more remarkable because existing records indi-cate that Ann Lemoine possibly became the ‰rst woman to enter intothe book publishing business. One reason why Ann Lemoine garneredsuch 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 notview her as a typical business owner. Chapbook publishers, in a numberof ways, operated as facilitators. They brought the diêrent trades andcrafts together through ‰nancial dealings. They arranged to buy storiesfrom authors; they worked with printers in designing formats; and theyprovided street vendors with a steady supply of merchandise. Those thatdid business with chapbook publishers acted, and viewed themselves, asindependent agents. Very few writers, printers, or booksellers would bewilling to acknowledge their dependence upon a single chapbook pub-lisher. In this manner, however, Lemoine’s control of not only her ownbusiness, but that of others, depended upon her skill and acumen inunderstanding the chapbook market.

Lemoine achieved her success in the chapbook industry by fully em-bracing traditional ways of making chapbooks attractive to potentialreaders and, in the majority of cases, improving upon them. Lemoinebelieved that the title held an incredible amount of inŠuence uponpotential readers and she learned way to manipulate that inŠuence. Justas it is today, both readers and publishers determined available readingmaterial, but the predetermined options provided by publishers limitavailable choices. One of the long-standing idiosyncrasies of not onlychapbooks, but also of higher-priced bound books of the era, includedthe 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 whichtypically combined a short, primary title with a lengthier explanatorytitle separated by a semicolon. Lemoine followed this format with such

24. Joy Wiltenburg, Disorderly Women and Female Power in the Street Literatureof Early Modern England and Germany (Charlottesville, VA: University Press ofVirginia, 1992), 7.


titles as The Beautiful African; or, Love and Slavery. An Interesting Tale orEdwin; or, The Wandering Fugitive. An History Founded on Facts. Thelast part of the title informed potential readers of the type of story beingoêred. Readers, evidently, did not welcome surprises in the type ofreading material being purchased. They not only wanted to know aheadof time whether the chapbook was worth the price, but they also wantedto know some basic facts about the chapbook, such as whether the storywas a romance, a history, or a historical romance. In a number of cases,this full disclosure of reading material listed the major plot points, aswith The Sicilian Pirate; or, The Pillar of Mystery. A Terri‰c Romance.Forming the Singular Life and Adventures of Adelmorn; Who, after SellingHimself to the Devil, at the Instigation of a Lapland Wizzard, Becomes aNotorious Pirate, and, by His Depredations and Cruelties, Renders Himselfthe 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 andDespair. The trick, then, for chapbook publishers was not only to givejust 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 andtitillate the curiosity of potential readers to go beyond the title-page.

Lemoine realized the importance of chapbook titles as a major factorin persuading readers to look closer at certain publications. Her titlemanipulation can be best demonstrated by contrasting her chapbookredactions with the original works. Many chapbook publishers soldchapbooks that contained abridged versions of longer novels. The lowprice of these redactions allowed the lower classes to enjoy the samepopular ‰ction that the upper classes read. Even with such name recog-nition, however, chapbook titles needed to go further. Lemoine knewthat lengthier titles did not necessarily equal better titles. Titles neededto give enough information to titillate, but not enough to make readersfeel as though they knew the complete story before buying a chapbook.In eêct, full disclosure also meant conciseness, so when Lemoineabridged Penelope Aubin’s 1736 novel The Life of Charlotta Du Pont, shestreamlined the title considerably. Aubin’s original, over-informative ti-tle was The Life of Charlotta Du Pont, an English Lady; Taken from HerOwn Memoirs: Giving an Account How She Was Trepan’d by Her Step-mother to Virginia, How the Ship Was Taken by some Madagascar Piratesand Retaken by a Spanish Man of War, of Her Marriage in the SpanishWest-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 Metwithal in Her Travels, some of Whom Had Been Slaves in Barbary andOthers Cast on Shore by Shipwreck on the Barbarous Coasts up the GreatRiver Oroonoko, with Their Escape thence and Safe Return to France andSpain: a History that Contains the Greatest Variety of Events that ever WasPublished. Aubin left very little question concerning the major plot lineof her novel. Lemoine felt she could improve upon the title and wiselyrenamed her chapbook The Life, Adventures and Distresses of CharlotteDupont, 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 servedas a major selling point by intriguing potential readers to know the exactnature 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 thesimple abridgement of longer works and took a more creative approachtowards reshaping the original material. In certain instances, her redactionswere designed to focus upon one particular theme or topic from theoriginal. When she redacted A General History of the Robberies and Mur-ders of the Most Notorious Pyrates, a popular book typically misattributedto Daniel Defoe, she reformatted the focus of the chapbook and devisedthe new title to read, Lives of Most Remarkable Female Robbers; The GermanPrincess, 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 originalpirate stories by gender. While stories of pirates intrigued chapbook read-ers who loved adventure, stories of female pirates provided a second layerof gender transgression that provoked and enticed a much larger audience.

Lemoine possessed a unique awareness of reader motivation. She knewthat a great many readers, regardless of their educational level, reliedupon 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 educatedreaders would immediately question how the famous work by GeoˆreyChaucer could be redacted into only forty-two pages, others, with only apassing familiarity with the notoriety of Chaucer’s work, might havebeen drawn to the Lemoine chapbook as a redaction of the original


because they failed to read the full title: Canterbury Tales: ContainingThe 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’s1802 chapbook also took advantage of the current popularity of anotherwork, written by Harriet and Sophia Lee in 1798, entitled The Canter-bury Tales. Even less similarity existed between Lemoine’s work andthat of the Lee sisters than with Chaucer’s work. Lemoine did not reallyintend to redact either work. Instead, she used the title-page in the mostpro‰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 ofsome of the most popular of Lemoine’s chapbooks. One of her ‰rstchapbooks, a jokebook entitled Laugh When You Can; or, The MonstrousDroll Jester. Containing the Best Collection of Jests. To Which is Added, TheBenevolent Jew, as Recited at the Royalty Theatre, originally released in1795, must have been a good seller because when she released anotherjokebook in 1800 she mimicked the title. She called her second jokebookLaugh When You Can; or, The Monstrous Droll Jester, and Chearful Com-panion. Containing Upwards of Two Hundred and Fifty Good Things, Manyof Which Are Not to Be Found in Any Other Collection. The 1800 editiondid reuse some of the same jokes, but included mostly new material.The format of the newer edition, however, diêred substantially enoughto have justi‰ed a completely new title. By keeping the ‰rst part of thetitle, 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 traditionalmainstay of chapbook publishers and sold consistently throughout theeighteenth century. Chapbook publishers believed that the success of achapbook series, such as the popularity of The Heart of Oak series, auto-matically relied upon the popularity of previous editions, and publisherstypically designated such editions as new issues within the series. WithThe 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 lyriccompilations, such as The Universal Songster and The Victory; or, BritishHarmony, which she never designated as part of a series. Only the titleconnects 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 thesame chapbook. The fact that Lemoine published The Heart of Oak se-ries later in her career than either The Universal Songster or The Victoryshows 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 titleprovided an incredibly complete, although brief, synopsis of the story,yet, probably because of the sack reference, gave potential readers anurge to ‰nd out more. The tale describes a wealthy man and his sisterwho both lived like paupers and refused to spend even a penny of theiraccumulated riches. Composed of brief anecdotes about the extent oftheir miserliness, the story ends when Dancer, about to die, climbs intoan old sack because “having come into this world without a shirt, he wasdetermined to go out in the same manner, as he brought nothing withhim, he did not think he had any right to carry anything away.”25

Beyond the titillating nature of this story, this chapbook boasts verylittle to justify its popularity, which emphasizes Ann Lemoine’s abilityto connect with the imaginations and desires of her readers. The DanielDancer chapbook is not particularly well-written. The writer developedthe characters poorly, stilted the dialogue, and followed a horribly disor-ganized plot line. As a historical account, there are too many missingfacts with pertinent and speci‰c details being simply nonexistent. Theremay be a moral lesson that could be inferred from the story, but theauthor does not give a ‰nal summation or oêr any direct advice on howto 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. Thehighly-descriptive title, however, drove the sales, made this chapbookhugely successful, and pushed it through at least ‰ve separate revisions.

Lemoine made sure that each revised edition placed a primary focusupon the story of Daniel Dancer and kept the ‰rst part of the chapbooktitle the same. She modi‰ed subsequent revisions by including variousshorter stories at the end. The title of the earliest version of this chap-

25. Anonymous, The Strange and Unaccountable Life of Daniel Dancer, Esq. WhoDied 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, theSouthwark Usurer, A Character Well Known Upon the Stock Exchange. ToWhich 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. GeorgeHarvest; Called the Absent Man; or Parson and Player. A later version in1801 kept the addition of Jemmy Taylor, but deleted the stories of Welbyand 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 removedthe histories and followed a more thematic approach by including theRemarkable Life of Baron D’Aguilar, with Some Account of his StarvationFarm. Each edition follows a diêrent thematic approach dependingupon the type of stories included, such as poverty, historical accounts, ormiserliness, in order to appeal to the various interests of potential read-ers. This adaptability depended entirely upon her keen perception of thechapbook market and the realization that chapbook readers relied agreat deal upon information provided on the title-page.

An identifying illustration or frontispiece included on the title-pageof most chapbooks, or added in as a separate page, also helped to marketchapbooks to potential readers. The visual advertisement worked in thesame fashion as the title by connecting with the imagination and desires ofreaders. Illustrations, varying from crude sketches to elaborate etchings,had a long association with street literature. The extensive use of roughor primitive looking woodcuts, starting with early chapbooks in seven-teenth century and continuing to the time of Lemoine, may be one reasonwhy a great deal of street literature has been viewed negatively. To begenerous, such simple illustrations have given a number of scholars theperception that many chapbooks were early forms of children’s litera-ture. In a harsher light, crude drawings on the covers equated, in theminds of many critics, to crude literature. While the contents and layoutof a book’s cover, as in the old maxim, may not give any indication of thequality of the book itself, for chapbooks the frontispiece and title-pageprovide a tremendous amount of information not only about how streetvendors sold these little books, but also give some perspective upon whyand how they appealed to chapbook readers of the eighteenth century.

The use of illustrations varied tremendously. Although not everychapbook 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 notonly on the outside, but also throughout. Simple economics establishedand limited the extent oŠlustrations. Artwork added costs that might,or might not, be recouped. For the chapbook publisher, each chapbookrepresented a substantial investment; every other party involved, fromthe writer to the printer, was paid prior to the ‰rst sale. By the end of theeighteenth century, middle- and upper-class book publishers began tomake diêrent contractual arrangements with writers, but for the rest ofthe 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 thegreatest economic risk.

Historically, then, early chapbooks typically exhibited a crude ap-pearance because of simple economics. Unlike the book market, therewas never any misrepresentation about the implied quality of street lit-erature. A wealthy reader enjoyed a wide range of available choices forreading matter. Even in the seventeenth century, readers discovered thathigh price did not assure quality with the existence of both low-priced,well-written books and over-priced, poorly conceived books. Decidingwhich book to buy required some type of criteria on the part of thebuyer, even if only that a book was bound with a certain type or color ofleather. For the economically disadvantaged reader, such choices weremore restricted. The decision for these early readers did not necessarilyconcern which chapbook they would buy, but whether they would buy achapbook at all. By the 1790s, however, with the increased numbers ofboth chapbook publishers and general readership, competition becamea major concern. Readers with little money saw an increasingly largerselection in reading matter. The growing competitive marketplaceeventually forced chapbook publishers to ‰nd some way to distinguishtheir 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 early1790s, a great number of chapbook publishers did not realize chapbookart 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 alimited life span. In some cases, printers used a single engraving blockrepeatedly on diêrent chapbooks until it wore out and could no longerproduce a legible image. Another approach employed engraving blocksthat could be modi‰ed for diêrent illustrations. Chapbooks sold at pub-lic executions typically employed the most common example of modi‰edillustrations. Comparable to theater programs, these chapbooks gavebrief 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 ofchapbooks produced by either of these approaches lacked and eventuallygrew less appealing to the growing sophistication of readers. Change, inregards 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 ofthe chapbook, but as one of the main means by which potential readersjudged the quality of diêrent chapbooks. Part of this credit, however,needs to be given to her husband Henry. Just prior to his bankruptcyand imprisonment, Henry Lemoine had invested in a copperplateprinting business. The later eighteenth century saw quite a number ofinventions pertaining to the printing process, such as chemical reliefetching and lithography, and the use of copper plates for illustrations instreet literature became economically feasible. Once the initial investmentfor 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 Lemoineforesaw this change in technology and Ann Lemoine followed throughon it.

Ann Lemoine made full use of this new technology in a number ofways 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 individualchapbooks. Lemoine quickly recognized how this aspect could increaseher reputation as a chapbook publisher. Early examples of her chap-books from 1795 indicate that she did not have immediate use of thecopperplate business her husband owned, probably because it had beensold in order to resolve his debts. Her chapbooks from 1795 and part of1796 used illustrations printed by wooden engravings. By her secondyear in business, however, she associated herself with a well-known cop-perplate printer named Thomas Maiden and the front of her chapbooksgained 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 ofillustrations. 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 completelyseparate page for an illustration, none came close to achieving the samelevel of artistic quality as Lemoine’s. These full-page frontispieces fromher chapbooks exhibited very elaborate details and typically recounted adramatic 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 curiousscenes and subtitled them in such a way as to provoke questions fromreaders. Some frontispieces were fairly pedestrian, such as “William andJane receiving the Hermits blessing.” Others were far more dramaticand 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 theexact same frontispiece entitled, “Miss Dancer greeting her brother uponhis good luck in ‰nding a dead sheep upon the common.” This highlyprovocative picture of Dancer giving an animal carcass to his sister com-bined with the inscription immediately prompts the viewer to questionhow long the sheep has been dead and the extent of its decomposition.

Lemoine based a good number of her chapbook ideas from trendsshe observed in the higher-priced book trade. In this respect, her pub-lishing techniques not only surpassed other chapbook publishers, buther innovative use of technology challenged all but the most sophisti-cated book publishers. During the late eighteenth century, the printing


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industry was not only experimenting with ways to speed up the printingprocess, but also looking for a method to allow the easy replication ofcolored illustrations. Prior to this point, illustrations were painstakinglydrawn by hand and added an enormous amount to the ‰nal price of abook. In 1768, Jean Baptiste Le Prince, a French painter, invented a wayto use acid to etch copper plates for printing. This aquatint process al-lowed prints to be made with tonal gradations. Combined with coloredinks and repeated stampings, printers were now provided with a de-pendable method to include colored illustrations in books. The coloredaquatint process replicated the majority of the drawing, although theresulting image still required a colorist to add the ‰nal touch-ups byhand.26

At a time when very few printers were even familiar with such aprocess, Lemoine used this cutting-edge technology for her 1802 chap-book, The Black Forest; or, The Cavern of Horrors, which was availablewith a standard black and white frontispiece for four pence or, for twopence 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 wasthe ‰rst chapbook publisher to use colored illustrations and, for manyyears, the only one oêring colored editions. Eventually, others such asJames Kendrew followed her example. Kendrew, a chapbook publisherwho worked in London from 1803 to 1841, however, was unwilling, or‰nancially unable, to give the same attention to quality. For his coloredchapbooks, he “employed his daughter and other female relatives to co-lour plates and valentines for him.”27 Because of this, James Kendrewnever achieved the same level of success as Lemoine. Her professionalapproach to chapbook production established a solid foundation on whichshe built her reputation in the trade.

Lemoine also achieved success in the chapbook industry because ofthe unusual, for the time, business choices she made. Traditionally, aftera run of chapbooks was printed and oêred for sale, the remaining stockwas 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 thisidea. She compiled thematic selections of various overruns into largerbooks in order to take advantage of the collecting impulse of wealthierbuyers. A number of chapbook collectors, such as James Boswell and hisson Alexander, paid to have compilations made for them. Lemoine isthe only known chapbook publisher who thought to create chapbookcollections for prospective buyers. Some of these compilations becamehugely popular. Of her most famous compilation, Wild Roses, one readerrecalled in 1862 that it was “a volume the delight of our boyhood, andstill 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); andThe 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 wereclearly labeled on the title-page as belonging to a particular series, suchas Tell-Tale Magazine or English Nights Entertainment. In some in-stances, Lemoine planned for the exact position of certain chapbooks inlater compilations. Quite a few single chapbooks exhibit an odd pagenumbering system. Even though the pages are consecutively numbered,the numbering does not start with “one.” For example, a sixteen-pagechapbook may be numbered from page forty-nine to page sixty-four.When this odd feature has been noted by critics in the past, it wasblamed as a printing error. On the contrary, these page numbers in anoriginal chapbook designated its eventual placement in a compilation.Overruns of the sixteen-page chapbook example would have ended upas 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 discriminatingbuyers. This extensive planning for a chapbook series, however, was rare,even for Ann Lemoine. In The Little Tale Teller; or, Simple Stories, AnnLemoine used a more common printing technique. The compilationcontains 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 loosenumbering system allowed for last-minute substitutions. The ‰nal limitof 192 pages also permitted diêrent combinations of chapbook sizessince the number was divisible by the most common chapbook length ofsixteen, twenty-four, and thirty-two pages. Ann Lemoine used a similartechnique with a ‰nal page limit of 288 in other compilations such asEnglish Nights Entertainment.

During the eighteenth century, very little diêrence existed betweena chapbook series and a periodical, except semantics. If a reader coulddepend 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 nineperiodicals specializing in prose ‰ction were published in the three quar-ters of a century from 1740-1815.”29 Of these nine, which includes AnnLemoine’s Tell-Tale Magazine, Mayo further declares that none of theperiodicals published either original ‰ction or new English translationsof foreign works.30 From a historical standpoint, a clear determinationcannot always be made whether a particular chapbook compilation wasreleased on a periodical basis or compiled afterwards. In considering theways in which Lemoine planned her chapbook compilations, certainlyEnglish Nights Entertainments should be included on the list and, quitepossibly, her four other chapbook compilations. Evidence also existsthat chapbook compilations by her husband including The Conjuror’sMagazine 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 aswell. Since late eighteenth-century periodicals that specialized in prose‰ction gave birth to both the short story format and today’s literarymagazines, 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, butalso 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 provefor any text, and an argument could be made that a good redactionshows as much artistic merit as a lengthier piece. So far, though, onlyeleven out of the eighty-three tales in Tell-Tale Magazine have beenfound to be redactions of larger works. The greater majority of taleswere written speci‰cally for this series. While a few of the stories wouldhave appealed to children, such as the retelling of Dick Whittingtonand his cat in Tale 42, or the “Seven Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor” inTale 5, other tales are targeted towards a broader audience.

The story line for one tale should serve as evidence that Lemoinestrove 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 seeksto possess her. In a quick series of events, Adolphus marries Correliaand the newlyweds have a baby, which enrages Oswald. Oswald thenmurders Adolphus, has Correlia imprisoned in the eastern turret of thecastle, and fosters the child, Ferdinand, out to a poor farmer in the nextcounty. Ferdinand comes of age, returns to the castle, and falls in lovewith the caretaker’s daughter, Bertha. Ferdinand then meets his motherand learns not only his true identity, but that he has a sister as well, whois, of course, Bertha. Ferdinand and Bertha plot an elaborate revengeagainst 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 restrictedto juvenile readers, but would have appealed to a more mature audience.The Tell-Tale Magazine included quite of number of romances similarto “The Eastern Turret.” The full title of the chapbook series, The Tell-Tale Magazine; or, Universal Museum. Consisting of a Series of InterestingAdventures, Voyages, Histories, Lives, Tales, and Romances, indicates thatLemoine 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 topromote certain texts to new audiences and merge the popularity ofwell-known writers with her own reputation. Tale 62 reprinted WilliamCowper’s comic verse, “The Diverting History of John Gilpin,” whichwas 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 poetictale of John Gilpin’s wife, says, “Lemoine, if not a genius, was a man ofsuch considerable talent, and so typical of the versatile bookseller of theeighteenth 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. Potterbased a portion of his ‰ndings on Mayo and erroneously claimed thatAnn 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. Nothingcould be further from the truth. Mayo claims that Wilkinson wrote tentales for the Lemoine series36 and Potter claims that she wrote sixteen.37

In actuality, Wilkinson wrote fourteen of the eighty-three tales, hardlyan overwhelming percentage. Tracing Wilkinson’s authorship in the Tell-Tale Magazine is fairly straightforward, since she was very meticulous inappending her name to her work. Wilkinson started her writing careerin 1803 and was eager for recognition. Consider the twenty-second chap-book in the series, which contained three tales. Instead of only puttingher name on the title-page of the chapbook, Wilkinson asked for hername to be credited after the title of each individual tale. Chapbooktwenty-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.

35. Franz J. Potter, “Introduction,” Romances and Gothic Tales by Anonymous,1801 (Camarillo, CA: Zittaw Press, 2004), 5.

36. Mayo, 368.

37. Ibid., 18.

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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 Wilkinsonwrote Tale 57 of the Tell-Tale Magazine, “The Life of an Authoress,”and that the story was Wilkinson’s autobiography.38 Actually, the talehas more in common with the 1799 novel by Mary Hays entitled Victimof 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 involvedin the production of her chapbooks, including writers. Between 1803and 1806, Wilkinson wrote a total of eighteen chapbooks for Lemoine.During this time, Wilkinson also wrote stories for at least ‰ve otherchapbook publishers, including Simon Fisher, John Ker, Thomas Hughes,Mace, and Kaygill. A close, creative relationship between Wilkinsonand Lemoine did not exist. When Wilkinson’s big break came in 1806with her ‰rst novel, The Thatched Cottage; or, Sorrows of Eugenia, shepublished the novel with the help of a subscription list. According to thelist of one hundred and ‰fty-four subscribers to Wilkinson’s new novel,however, Lemoine did not ‰nancially support Wilkinson’s venture intonovel writing. From her position as a chapbook publisher, she probablyprovided many beginning writers the opportunity to experiment anddevelop their craft. The overwhelming majority of those writers re-mained unrecognized in the chapbook business, while some moved onto other ‰elds. Lemoine realized early that the chapbook trade, unlikethe tendencies of the more recognizable and more distinguished booktrade, centered upon the interests and desires of the readers instead ofthe writers. She acknowledged and gave credit for artistic expression,but the focus of her chapbooks remained on her potential audience. Forwriters who wanted to write what readers wanted to read, Ann Lemoinegave 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 inŠuentialwoman publisher, she facilitated the work of others in order to produce

38. Ibid., 18.


popular reading material for over twenty years. Through her ability totarget reader’s interests and her employment of new methods to printchapbooks, she became the largest chapbook publisher in London at theend of the eighteenth century. Many scholars argue that by the 1820s,the era of chapbooks ended; however, small booklets continued to beprinted, even to today, in great numbers. Lemoine’s changes in bothcontent and form of the chapbook blurred any lingering demarcationsbetween 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.

Documents

A History of Guilty Pleasure: Chapbooks and the Lemoines