colporteur
/ˈkɒlˌpɔːtə
/ /ˌkɒlpɔːˈtəː /noun
1A person who sells books, newspapers, and similar literature.The prefect's efforts in this affair were focused on the persecution of colporteurs, key figures in the marketing and distribution of antigovernment pamphlets and newspapers.
1.1Someone employed by a religious society to distribute bibles and other religious tracts.Throughout the 1890s, Korean colporteurs worked with missionaries to distribute texts throughout the country....
- At one time it employed nearly 300 colporteurs, and virtually every parish in the country was visited by one of its men and his bag of books.
- E. G. Wheeler and his wife were the first Baptist chapel car colporteurs.
Derivatives
colportage
- They were in the tradition of colportage, hawked by street pedlars who entered bars and workshops, or sold by tobacconists, newsagents, or at railway kiosks.
- Some of the Titanic instant books were produced by colportage publishing firms; others were published by firms specializing in children's books, travel narratives, political biographies, etc.
- It was instrumental in the colportage movement in America, a system of traveling Christian literature salesmen whose trade it was to distribute a mushrooming inventory of Gospel literature - tracts, pamphlets, books and magazines - in the streets, into the homes and churches, and across America.
Origin
Late 18th century: French, from the verb colporter, probably an alteration of comporter, from Latin comportare 'carry with one'.