Book peddlers were

travel Travel is the movement of people between distant geographical locations. Travel can be done by foot, bicycle, automobile, train, boat, bus, airplane, ship or other means, with or without luggage, and can be one way or round trip. Travel ...

ling

vendor In a supply chain, a vendor, supplier, provider or a seller, is an enterprise that contributes goods or services. Generally, a supply chain vendor manufactures inventory/stock items and sells them to the next link in the chain. Today, these terms ...

s ("

peddler A peddler, in British English pedlar, also known as a chapman, packman, cheapjack, hawker, higler, huckster, (coster)monger, colporteur or solicitor, is a door-to-door and/or travelling vendor of goods. In England, the term was mostly used f ...

s") of

book A book is a medium for recording information in the form of writing or images, typically composed of many pages (made of papyrus, parchment, vellum, or paper) bound together and protected by a cover. The technical term for this phys ...

s. This occupation had its peculiarities in various countries.

United States

Book canvassers

Door-to-door Door-to-door is a canvassing technique that is generally used for sales, marketing, advertising, evangelism or campaigning, in which the person or persons walk from the door of one house to the door of another, trying to sell or advertise a ...

book peddlers of the 18th and 19th centuries, also known as "book canvassers", used to carry special "sample books", a kind of "preview", with a table of contents, sample illustrations and some text, designed to advertise the book in question.Review of the book by Keith Arbour Canvassing subscription sales were the only way to deliver books to many rural areas of America. Hawkers (peddlers) were often frowned upon by the law, but book peddlers were treated differently. For example, laws of

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

and

Missouri Missouri is a U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. Ranking List of U.S. states and territories by area, 21st in land area, it is bordered by eight states (tied for the most with Tennessee ...

that imposed penalties on hawkers who operated without a license excluded book peddlers.

Russian Empire

Lithuania

When printing

Lithuanian language Lithuanian ( ) is an Eastern Baltic language belonging to the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family. It is the official language of Lithuania and one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.8 milli ...

books in

Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet or Roman alphabet is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language. Largely unaltered with the exception of extensions (such as diacritics), it used to write English and the ...

was forbidden in

Russian Empire The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the List of Russian monarchs, Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended th ...

, book peddlers, ''

knygnešiai Lithuanian book smugglers or Lithuanian book carriers ( lt, knygnešys, plural: lt, knygnešiaĩ, label=none) transported Lithuanian language books printed in the Latin alphabet into Lithuanian-speaking areas of the Russian Empire, defying a ba ...

'' in Lithuanian, smuggled the books printed abroad, in

Lithuania Minor Lithuania Minor ( lt, Mažoji Lietuva; german: Kleinlitauen; pl, Litwa Mniejsza; russian: Ма́лая Литва́), or Prussian Lithuania ( lt, Prūsų Lietuva; german: Preußisch-Litauen, pl, Litwa Pruska), is a historical ethnography, et ...

, under the threat of criminal

prosecution A prosecutor is a legal representative of the prosecution in states with either the common law adversarial system or the civil law inquisitorial system. The prosecution is the legal party responsible for presenting the case in a criminal tri ...

. This activity played an important role in preservation of the

Lithuanian culture Culture of Lithuania combines an indigenous heritage, represented by the unique Lithuanian language, with Nordic cultural aspects and Christian traditions resulting from historical ties with Poland. Although linguistic resemblances represent str ...

, and in modern Lithuania ''knygnešiai'' are commemorated in museums, monuments, street names, and their remembrance day.

Evangelism

In 1866, the "Society for Distribution of the Holy Scripture in Russia" (“Высочайше утверждённое Общество для распространения Священного Писания в России”) was established in

St. Petersburg Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...

, with subsidiaries in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 million ...

established in early 1880s. In addition to the initial goal of peddling the Christian literature, they started to arrange religious discussion meetings. Eventually the activities of the society were frowned upon by the administration of the Russian Church for their independence and liberalism and closeness to the

Tolstoyan The Tolstoyan movement is a social movement based on the philosophical and religious views of Russian novelist Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910). Tolstoy's views were formed by rigorous study of the ministry of Jesus, particularly the Sermon on the Mo ...

s. After various restrictions put forth by the infamous Ober-Procurator of the

Holy Synod In several of the autocephalous Eastern Orthodox churches and Eastern Catholic Churches, the patriarch or head bishop is elected by a group of bishops called the Holy Synod. For instance, the Holy Synod is a ruling body of the Georgian Orthod ...

Konstantin Pobedonostsev Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev ( rus, Константи́н Петро́вич Победоно́сцев, p=kənstɐnʲˈtʲin pʲɪˈtrovʲɪtɕ pəbʲɪdɐˈnostsɨf; 30 November 1827 – 23 March 1907) was a Russian jurist, statesman ...

, the activity of the society dwindled. The

Seventh-day Adventist The Seventh-day Adventist Church is an Adventist Protestant Christian denomination which is distinguished by its observance of Saturday, the seventh day of the week in the Christian (Gregorian) and the Hebrew calendar, as the Sabbath, a ...

s, persecuted in Russia, employed

colportage Colportage is the distribution of publications, books, and religious tracts by carriers called "colporteurs" or "colporters". The term does not necessarily refer to religious book peddling. Etymology From French , where the term is an alterat ...

of literature published abroad and smuggled into Russia, under the threat of arrest, fine, and confiscation.

Japan

The tradition of book peddling traces back to the

Edo period The or is the period between 1603 and 1867 in the history of Japan, when Japan was under the rule of the Tokugawa shogunate and the country's 300 regional ''daimyo''. Emerging from the chaos of the Sengoku period, the Edo period was character ...

Taro Aso Taro () (''Colocasia esculenta)'' is a root vegetable. It is the most widely cultivated species of several plants in the family Araceae that are used as vegetables for their corms, leaves, and petioles. Taro corms are a food staple in Africa ...

Minister for Foreign Affairs A foreign affairs minister or minister of foreign affairs (less commonly minister for foreign affairs) is generally a cabinet minister in charge of a state's foreign policy and relations. The formal title of the top official varies between countr ...

of Japan, in his speech in the ''Japan Institute of International Affairs'' (2006) describes them as follows.

If you look for example at the book lenders of the day, it seems that a single book lender would have over a hundred customers. When a new title was released, the book lenders would put it into a bag and take it round to their customers. The customers would then slice open the seal on the bag to get the latest release. This, incidentally, is where the word for “the latest release,” ''fukiri'' — literally “seal-slicing” — has its origins, and we still use that word to this day, although in recent years to describe the release of new movies.A speech of Taro Aso in the Japan Institute of International Affairs
/ref>

Notes

References

*Friedman, Walter A., ''Birth of a Salesman: The Transformation of Selling in America'' (1962)
Excerpt online
*Arbour, Keith, ''Canvassing Books, Sample Books, and Subscription Publishers' Ephemera, 1833–1951, in the Collection of Michael Zinman''. Ardsley, New York: The Haydn Foundation for the Cultural Arts, 1996.

{{DEFAULTSORT:Book Peddler Obsolete occupations Sales occupations