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.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.