If you're a long-time reader of our blog, then you've heard us enthuse about books before. As we explained in a previous post, chapbooks were cheap and ephemeral publications made to fill a demand for reading material by the working class who, while increasingly literate, could not afford to purchase a book outright. Chapbooks were an important means of disseminating popular culture as well as improving literacy rates. In England, roving peddlers called chapmen would depart from London or other printing centers with their bags full of these flimsy, poorly made books and sell them all over the countryside.Our incomparable Rare Book and Manuscript Metadata Librarian has recently catalogued an exciting number of chapbooks in our collections that previously weren't publicly discoverable. One of them is a charming little work called Metamorphosis; or, a Transformation of Pictures, with Poetical Explanations, for the Amusement of Young Persons that was printed in 1819 in Philadelphia and sold in New York. Our favorite detail about this particular chapbook is its folded pages that reveal different images and tableaus when they are flipped open or closed in the proper order. First, Adam from the Bible appears on the scene next to a suspicious-looking tree. When you flip the top panel up, Adam's upper body turn into Eve and the tree now contains a serpent talking to her.
This is where things get weird, though, because when you flip the bottom panel down, Eve turns into a mermaid. Lest we dwell on that particular metamorphosis for too long, the chapbook quickly show us a lion that turns into a griffin that turns into an eagle stealing a human baby to have for dinner. While no one would accuse this chapbook of narrative coherence, it is a lot of fun to play with. To explore it for yourself, come to Rauner and ask to see Chapbook 137
