A text, usually in the form of verse, in which every line or every alternate line starts with a consecutive letter of the alphabet. Used as a tool for teaching young children how to read.

Annually published books and sheets based on the calendar with the observations on the passage of time, the seasons, astronomical data and the interpretation of these data.

In Italy in the 16th and 17th centuries, avviso (spelled with double v in Italian) denoted a specific type of handwritten or printed newsletters as well as the content of these newsletters (news).

A ballad was a popular song that had many subgenres such as the love ballad, the satirical ballad and the execution ballad. Ballads were common across Europe.

Books of secrets or recipe books are ‘treatises that professed to reveal the “secrets of nature” to anyone who could read’ (Eamon 1994, 3).

Broadsheets (or broadsides) is a portmanteau term referring to a form of prints consisting of only a single sheet, printed on one side only in the case of broadsides.

The catechism is an exposition of Christian doctrine, or oftentimes rather an ideal of what the true doctrine should be. Such texts quickly became participants in the fierce political and religious struggles between Catholics and Protestants over the correct interpretation of the faith.

The label catechism primer is used to define a wide range of materials aimed at teaching to read and contextually providing religious education.

The term chapbook is used in scholarship in a double sense: first, as a collective term to indicate cheaply printed booklets. Secondly, the term refers to a specifically British and American genre.

Apart from schoolbooks, in most Northern European countries a distinct market for children’s literature meant for entertainment did not establish until the late 17th or 18th century, and in Southern Europe by the 19th century.

Overview of events described in chronological order, often starting from Creation until the most recent times. Part of these events were biblical or classical, others were related to more recent European or national (sometimes even regional) history.

Cookbooks are a type of how-to books that usually contain mostly recipes. They could also contain instructions about required utensils, how to properly supply and maintain your kitchen, how to preserve ingredients, how to serve meals.

The Dutch courant (in modern Dutch often shortened to krant) derived its name from the French words courrier (meaning a running messenger) and courant (referring to a current, for example in a river). The term was taken up in English as coranto or courant.

Criminal narratives are stories about criminals, be it fictional or non-fictional. This genre comprises many forms such as criminal biographies, dying speeches, murder and execution ballads, and penny prints.

Devotional literature accounted for a major stream of steady sellers across Europe from the early days of print onwards.

A widely used genre of broadsides commissioned by authorities were official forms. Such forms included indulgences, certificates, permissions, receipts, bills of sale and similar genres.

Printed materials designed for play, usually according to prescribed rules.

While the term initially referred to handwritten news sheets (e.g. in Italy, France, and the Low Countries), gazette became one of the most widely used terms across Europe for printed periodicals.

A herbal describes (and in several cases also depicts) plants with a focus on their medicinal qualities and application.

On early modern title pages the term ‘history’ (and its translations) was used very often for fictional as well as non-fictional narratives, in verse and prose alike.

Hornbooks were educational material for children, consisting of a wooden board with a handle, with a single sheet of print on them.

Didactic texts that advised on practical how-to knowledge (e.g. recipes, husbandry, domestic labour), on devotional practices within the home, and/or on the appropriate conduct for husbands, wives, and other household members.

Early modern how-to books are a category for which no unified terminology is in use. They provided practical instruction, often combined with some more theoretical or general background knowledge, in fields as varied as medicine, carpentry, horticulture, navigation, mining, cooking, calligraphy, embroidery.

Jestbooks are collections of jokes and humorous anecdotes in book form.

In the context of news, the term was used for different kinds of periodicals. In addition, journal (and its translations) could also be used to refer to an itinerary, a day-by-day account for example of a journey, or a diary.

Libels and pasquils were types of pamphlets, (often short) polemical writings with a satirical or outright biting tone.

Lottery was a game of chance in the early modern period. A lottery ticket was bought in order to participate in a lottery. In these days two forms of lotteries were current in Europe: the lotto and the class lottery.

Amidst the religious controversies of the 16th and 17th centuries, especially in Germany, the Low Countries, England, and France, the lives and especially the deaths of contemporary martyrs were the subject of different kinds of publications.

Medical text types overlapped and merged in many ways (e.g. theoretical explanations and practical remedies, preventive and curative medicine), and many kinds of compilations of medical knowledge appeared.

The Mercurius (Latin) refers to a printed, periodical series of books of contemporary history.

Various types of print related to Christmas and the new year circulated in the early modern period. 

News pamphlets are small printed items containing just a single news fact or event. Across Europe, they were an important means of distributing printed news in the era before periodicals

The term newsbook was used in 17th-century England and is used by historians of the 17th- and 18th-century Low Countries (nieuwsboek), but both traditions concern quite different genres. No equivalent term seems to have existed in other European languages. 

A periodical publication covering a broad range of current events and usually including advertisements, issued frequently, especially daily or weekly.

Term used in French, English, Dutch (nouvelle) and Italian (nuova) to denote a single piece of news, similar in use to tiding and report. Predating, and subsequently running parallel with, the early modern use of nouvelle in a news context, the term was used to indicate a literary genre of short narrative prose.

Almost exclusively written in the vernacular, pamphlets were typically short writings of a polemic or propagandistic nature on topical (social, political, religious) issues.

Penny prints are cheap broadsides, printed on one side and illustrated with 8 to 48 woodcuts. Rhyming captions below the images either narrated the story or explained the (non-fictional) pictures.

The plague, probably the most-feared disease in early modern Europe, generated an ongoing stream of printed materials, booklets as well as printed images, especially at times of outbreaks.

The term playbill is used for a bill, placard or poster that advertised plays and was intended for public display. They usually also gave the names of the actors. Playbooks contained the theatre texts themselves.

Prayer books were commonly considered aids for the conduct of church service or for personal prayer. As such they were not wholly unambiguously popular print.

Proclamations or ordinances, usually from the state government, notified the population of official decrees and laws.

Booklet in almanac form or part of an almanac containing (almost) exclusively predictions for the coming year, describing seasons, months, expected harvests, foreseeable diseases, wars, etc.

Regimens instructed people in the management of the six non-natural things from which health depends. These are: food and drink, sleep, exercise, the air one breathes, emotions (or ‘passions’) and evacuations (including hygiene).

The term Relatione originated in Italy in the 16th century, where it referred to occasional publications that specifically related military and political events.

In Venice, the term reporto was largely synonymous with avvisi, similarly being used to denote both a newsletter and its content (news). From Northern Italy the term spread across Europe, where in most contexts it referred solely to a single piece of news.

In the history of English literature the word ‘romance’ is generally used for medieval and early modern long works of fiction in prose. The term ‘novel’ only gained ground in the second half of the 17th century.

The label “rooster primer” is used to refer to a reading primer with the image of the rooster on a prominent place of the booklet. Printed since the 1570s in Central Europe and soon after in Northern Europe, in some countries the history of this kind of primers extends into the present. Whereas the position…

Saints’ lives were the subject of many kinds of popular publications, ranging from ballads and single-sheet images (e.g. devotional images, penny prints) to longer stories (e.g. in chapbooks), sermons, prayers, and collections of hagiographies.

Sermons were printed and published either in the form of pamphlets (containing a single sermon) or as collections containing the most popular sermons of one or more preachers.

The English word tiding, as well as the German Zeitung and the Dutch tijding are derived from the middle Low German Tidung, meaning a message or event. In the 15th and 16th centuries all these terms referred primarily to a single piece of news.

Topical or occasional poetry was written in response to an event in the family (birth, marriage, death) or public sphere (battle, commemoration), or on the occasion of a poetry contest (e.g. of rhetoricians, or the Spanish justas poéticas).

Descriptive accounts or literary writings by travellers.