A Brief History of Chapbooks

Noel Black over at KRCC Radio Colorado College offers a shortened recording of Matvei Yankelevich's talk on the history of chapbooks for the "Efficiency, Excess, and Ephemerality" exhibition. It's dubbed over images of chapbooks of various vintages, from presses far and wide. 


It's totally worth your time if, like me, you're fascinated by the book as object and/or the commerce of poetry. (Yes, there IS a commerce of poetry - often as a gift economy, but that IS an economy.) Turns out the chapbook has been threading the edges of society for hundreds of years. I'm pleased to follow along.