CHAPBOOK, the comparatively modern name applied by booksellers and bibliophiles to the little stitched tracts written for the common people and formerly circulated in England, Scot land and the American colonies by itinerant dealers or chapmen, consisting chiefly of vulgarized versions of popular stories, such as Tom Thumb, Jack the Giant Killer, Mother Shipton, and Reynard the Fox—travels, biographies and religious treatises. Few of the older chapbooks exist. Samuel Pepys collected some of the best and had them bound into small quarto volumes which he called Vulgaria; also four volumes of a smaller size, which he lettered Penny Witticisms, Penny Merriments, Penny Compli ments and Penny Godlinesses. The early chapbooks were the di rect descendants of the black letter tracts of Wynkyn de Worde. It was in France that the printing-press first began to supply reading for the common people. At the end of the 15th century there was a large popular literature of farces, tales in verse and prose, satires, almanacs, etc., stitched together so as to contain a few leaves, and circulated by itinerant booksellers, known as col porteurs. Most early English chapbooks are adaptations or trans lations of these French originals, and were introduced into Eng land early in the 16th century. The chapbooks of the 17th cen tury present us with valuable illustrations of the manners of the time ; one of the best known is that containing the story of Dick Whittington. In France literature of this kind has been the ob ject of close and systematic study, and L'Histoire des livres populaires ou de la litterature du colportage by Charles Nisard (1854) goes deeply into the subject. Amongst English books may be mentioned Notices of Fugitive Tracts and Chapbooks, by J O. Halliwell-Phillipps (1849) ; Chapbooks of the 18th Century, by John Ashton (1882) , and some reprints by the Villon Society in 1885.