The origin of the word, known in English since 1225, is uncertain, but is possibly an Anglicised version of the French pied, Latin pes, pedis "foot", referring to a petty trader travelling on foot.

A peddler, under English law, is defined as: “any hawker, pedlar, petty chapman, tinker, caster of metals, mender of chairs, or other person who, without any horse or other beast bearing or drawing burden, travels and trades on foot and goes from town to town or to other men’s houses, carrying to sell or exposing for sale any goods, wares, or merchandise immediately to be delivered, or selling or offering for sale his skill in handicraft." The main distinction between peddlers and other types of street vendor is that peddlers travel as they trade, rather than travel to a fixed place of trade. Peddlers travel around and approach potential customers directly whereas street traders set up a pitch or a stall and wait for customers to approach them. When not actually engaged in selling, peddlers are required to keep moving. Although peddlers may stop to make a sale, they are precluded from setting up a pitch or remaining in the same place for lengthy periods. Although peddlers normally travel by foot, there is no reason why they cannot use some means of assistance, such as a cart or a trolley, to assist in the transportation of goods.

Peddlers have been known since antiquity and possibly earlier. They were known by a variety of names throughout the ages, including Arabber, hawker, costermonger (English), chapman (medieval English), huckster, itinerant vendor or street vendor. According to marketing historian, Eric Shaw, the peddler is "perhaps the only substantiated type of retail marketing practice that evolved from Neolithic times to the present." The political philosopher, John Stuart Mill wrote that "even before the resources of society permitted the establishment of shops, the supply of wants fell universally into the hands of itinerant dealers, the pedlars who might appear once a month, being preferred to the fair, which only returned once a year."

Typically, peddlers operated door-to-door, plied the streets or stationed themselves at the fringes of formal trade venues such as open air markets or fairs. In the Greco-Roman world, open-air markets served urban customers, while peddlers filled in the gaps in distribution by selling to rural or geographically distant customers.

In the Bible the term 'peddler' was used to describe those who spread the word of God for profit. The book of Corinthians has the following phrase, "For we are not as so many, peddling the word of God." (Corinthians 2:17). The Greek term translated "peddling" referred to small-scale merchant who profited from acting as a middleman between others. The Apocrypha has the following, "A merchant shall hardly keep himself from doing wrong ; and an huckster shall not be freed from sin" (Ecclesiasticus 26:29).

In some economies the work of itinerant selling was left to nomadic minorities, such as gypsies, travellers, or Yeniche who offered a varied assortment of goods and services, both evergreens and (notoriously suspicious) novelties. In 19th century USA, peddling was often the occupation of immigrant communities including Italians, Greeks and Jews. The more colourful peddlers were those that doubled as performers, healers, or fortune-tellers.

Historically, peddlers used a variety of different transport modes: they travelled by foot, carrying their wares; by means of a person or animal-drawn cart or wagon or used improvised carrying devices. Abram Goodman, who took to peddling in the US in the 1840s, reports that he travelled by foot, used a sleigh when roads were snowbound and also travelled, with his pack, by boat when traversing longer distances.

As market towns flourished in medieval Europe, peddlers found a role operating on the fringes of the formal economy. They called directly on homes, delivering produce to the door thereby saving customers time travelling to markets or fairs. However, customers paid a higher price for this convenience. Some peddlers operated out of inns or taverns, where they often acted as an agent rather than a reseller. Peddlers played an important role providing services to geographically isolated districts, such as in the mountainous regions of Europe, thereby linking these districts with wider trading routes.

A 16th-century commentator wrote of the:

“many pedlars and chapmen, that from fair to fair, from markett to markett, carieth it to sell in horspakks and fote pakks, in basketts and budgelts, sitting on holydays and sondais in chirche porchis and abbeys dayly to sell all such trifells.”

By the 18th-century, some peddlers worked for industrial producers, where they acted as a type of travelling sales representative. In England, these peddlers were known as “Manchester men.” Employed by a factory or entrepreneur, they sold goods from shop to shop rather than door to door and were thus operating as a type of wholesaler or distribution intermediary. They were the precursors to the modern sales representative.

In the United States, there was an upsurge in the number of peddlers in the late 18th century and this may have peaked decades just before the American Civil War. However, their numbers began to decline by the 19th-century. Advances in industrial mass production and freight transportation as a result of the war laid the groundwork for the beginnings of modern retail and distribution networks, which gradually eroded much of the need for travelling salesmen. The rise of popular mail order catalogues (e.g. Montgomery Ward began in 1872) offered another way for people in rural or other remote areas to obtain items not readily available in local stores or markets. A relatively short-lived upsurge in the number of peddlers was witnessed in the period following the second World War, when the wartime manufacturing boom came to an abrupt end, and returning soldiers finding themselves unable to secure suitable work, turned to peddling which generally offered a decent income.

In the United States, the travelling salesman became a stock character in countless jokes. Such jokes are typically bawdy, and usually feature small town rubes, farmers and other country folk, and frequently another stock character, the farmer's daughter.

Throughout much of Europe, suspicions of dishonest or petty criminal activity was long associated with peddlers and travellers. Regulations to discourage small-scale retailing by hawkers and peddlers, promulgated by English authorities in the 15th and 16th centuries and reinforced by the Church, did much to encourage stereotypical and negative attitudes towards peddlers. From the 16th century, peddlers were often associated with pejorative perceptions, many of which persisted until well into the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the modern economy a new breed of peddler, generally encouraged to dress respectably to inspire confidence with the general public, has been sent into the field as an aggressive form of direct marketing by companies pushing their specific products, sometimes to help launch novelties, sometimes on a permanent basis. In a few cases this has even been used as the core of a business.

Very few peddlers left written records. Many were illiterate and diaries are rare.^[19] Most peddlers handled cash transactions leaving behind few or no accounting records such as receipts, invoices or day- books. However, a very small number of peddlers kept diaries and these can be used to provide an insight into the daily life of a peddler. Ephraim Lisitzky (1885-1962), an immigrant from Russia, arrived in the US in 1900 and took up peddling for a brief period following his arrival. His autobiography, published in 1959 under the title, In the Grip of the Cross-Currents, describes his various encounters with householders and the difficulties he experienced making a sale as door after door was slammed in his face.^[20]

After arriving in America in 1842, Abram Vossen Goodman also maintained a diary of his experiences and that diary has been published by the American Jewish Archives.^[21] Extracts from the diary detail his experiences and thoughts about the life of a peddler. When, Goodman's initial attempts to find employment as a clerk were unsuccessful, on September 29, he wrote, "I had to do as all the others; with a bundle on my back I had to go out into the country, peddling various articles." (p. 95) In the first few weeks, he found the lifestyle onerous, uncertain and solitary.

"Can a man, in fact, be said to be "living" as he plods through the vast, remote country, uncertain even as to which farmer will provide him shelter for the coming night? In such an existence the single man gets along far better than the father of a family. Such fools as are married not only suffer themselves, but bring suffering to their women. How must an educated woman feel when, after a brief stay at home, her supporter and shelterer leaves with his pack on his back, not knowing where he will find lodging on the next night or the night after?" (p.96)

"Last week in the vicinity of Plymouth I met two peddlers, Lehman and Marx. Marx knew me from Furth, and that night we stayed together at a farmer's house. After supper we started singing, and I sat at the fireplace, thinking of all my past and of my family." (p.100)

[By October,1842 Goodman is travelling with a brother] "Not far from [Lunenburg] we were forced to stop on Wednesday because of the heavy snow. We sought to spend the night with a cooper, a Mr. Spaulding, but his wife did not wish to take us in. She was afraid of strangers, she might not sleep well; we should go our wa