A Small Presentation about Small Books
Abstract
My presentation is a short introduction to chapbooks. McGill’s library has a large, digitized collection of chapbooks, and I hope to address some of the material aspects of chapbooks—how were they printed, circulated, etc.—and how these books were used in literary culture. Another interest surrounding chapbooks is how the common stories in these books changed over time or among different printers.
David Ireland
McGill University, Quebec, Canada
David Ireland is finishing his Master of Information Studies degree at McGill University. He also has an M.Phil. in Linguistics from Trinity College Dublin. The focuses of his current studies are archiving and book history of various forms. He has started to narrow his studies for a PhD to chapbooks—small books containing poems, folk tales, etc. He wants to look at their intersection with literary culture and literacy teaching as these were inexpensive books that anyone could have.