Guy of Warwick and Other Chapbook Romances : Six Tales from the Popular Literature of Pre-Industrial England

The book: Chapbooks formed the staple reading matter of ordinary people, especially the rural poor, during the eighteenth and much of the nineteenth century; they were also read by children of the gentry.

The six chapbooks in this volume all derive from romances which were current in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, and provide a fascinating window on the mental world of rural England and America before the advent of mass media.

No previous attempt has been made to produce the full text of a selection of chapbooks for the modern reader; they have remained the province of specialist bibliographers and antiquarians.

This volume is designed to make available good reading texts of six chapbooks, and to use them to demonstrate something, of the permanence of romance narratives in early English and American popular culture.

The Volume is supported by a full introduction and notes which show the cultural and literary significance of chapbook romances in English and American society, and provides a discussion of the current state of scholarship.

The book is fully illustrated with black and white reproductions of woodcuts from original chapbooks.