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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Descriptive accounts or literary writings by travellers.