Dictionary:

pamphlet

  (păm'flĭt)

1. An unbound printed work, usually with a paper cover.
2. A short essay or treatise, usually on a current topic, published without a binding.

[Middle English pamflet, from Medieval Latin pamfletus, from Pamphiletus, diminutive of Pamphilus, amatory Latin poem of the 12th century, from Greek pamphilos, beloved by all : pan-, pan- + philos, beloved.]

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Pamphleteering was a means of propagating new or controversial ideas through the distribution of inexpensive and easily produced tracts or pamphlets. Because the pamphlets were brief and written in a popular style, they enjoyed tremendous circulation. Read aloud in taverns, churches, and town meetings, pamphlets became a significant means of mass communication and an essential vehicle for carrying on political debates in colonial America.

Pamphleteering had its roots in English practice, particularly during the religious controversies and political contests of the commonwealth period. Sermons, often with a political tinge, were distributed as pamphlets in colonial America. During the revolutionary period, figures such as James Otis, Stephen Hopkins, and John Dickinson debated the issue of taxation by Parliament through pamphlets. When military conflict broke out, patriots and loyalists alike engaged in pamphlet wars to justify their political choices. The most renowned pamphleteer of the American Revolution was Thomas Paine. His Common Sense was one of the strongest and most effective arguments for independence, and The Crisis papers were a powerful buttress to the morale of the patriot cause.

Americans continued to engage in pamphlet debates over issues that confronted the new government, especially the question of adopting the Constitution of the United States. Although newspapers were the forum for some of these debates—as was the case with the Federalist Papers—political opponents also used pamphlets to promote their points of view. Federalist pamphleteers included John Jay, Noah Webster, Pelatiah Webster, Tench Coxe, and David Ramsay. Representing the Antifederalists, Elbridge Gerry, George Mason, Melancthon Smith, Richard Henry Lee, Luther Martin, and James Iredell produced pamphlets in opposition.

The proliferation of newspapers in the early national period made pamphlet warfare less common, but some writers still used pamphlets to express their positions. Religious enthusiasts, reform groups, and propagators of utopian societies or economic panaceas often found the pamphlet an effective tool. Campaigns flooded the country with pamphlets to augment the circulation of newspapers or to make political attacks. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, socialists and populists used pamphlets to gain converts, and a free silver advocate produced the notorious Coin's Financial School. Propagandists during World War I, especially pacifists, utilized the pamphlet to sustain morale or refute criticism. After World War I pamphlet use declined. Increasingly, government organizations, religious groups, and learned societies continued to use pamphlets more often for informational purposes than for the propagation of controversial positions.

Bibliography

Adams, Thomas R. The British Pamphlet Press and the American Controversy, 1764–1783. Worcester, Mass.: American Antiquarian Society, 1979.

Bailyn, Bernard, and Jane N. Garrett, eds. Pamphlets of the American Revolution, 1750–1776. Cambridge: The Belknap Press of the Harvard University Press, 1965.

Bailyn, Bernard, and John B. Hench, eds. The Press and the American Revolution. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1981.

Silbey, Joel H., ed. The American Party Battle: Election Campaign Pamphlets, 1828–1876. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.

Wakelyn, Jon L. Southern Pamphlets on Secession, November 1860– April 1861. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996.

Polish soldiers reading a German leaflet during the Warsaw Uprising

A pamphlet is an unbound booklet (that is, without a hard cover or binding). It may consist of a single sheet of paper that is printed on both sides and folded in half, in thirds, or in fourths (called a leaflet), or it may consist of a few pages that are folded in half and stapled at the crease to make a simple book. In order to count as a pamphlet, UNESCO requires a publication (other than a periodical) to have 'at least 5 but not more than 48 pages exclusive of the cover pages'; a longer item is a book.

Pamphlets can contain anything from information on kitchen appliances to medical information and religious treatises. Pamphlets are very important in marketing as they are cheap to produce and can be distributed easily to customers. Pamphlets have also long been an important tool of political protest and political campaigning for similar reasons.

The storage of individual pamphlets requires special consideration because they can be easily crushed or torn when shelved alongside hardcover books. For this reason, they should either be kept in file folders in a file cabinet, or kept in boxes that have approximately the dimensions of a hardcover book and placed vertically on a shelf.

Etymology

The word pamphlet for a small work (opuscule) issued by itself without covers came into Middle English ca 1387 as pamphilet or panflet, generalized from a twelfth-century amatory comic poem with a satiric flavor, Pamphilus, seu de Amore ("Pamphilus: or, Concerning Love"), written in Latin ^[1]). Pamphilus's name was derived from Greek, meaning "loved by all". The poem was popular and widely copied and circulated on its own, forming a slim codex.

Its modern connotations of a tract concerning a contemporary issue was a product of the heated arguments leading to the English Civil War; this sense appeared in 1642.^[2] In some European languages other than English, this secondary connotation, of a disputaceous tract, has come to the fore.

Notes

1. ^ OED s.v. "pamphlet".
2. ^ On-line Etymology Dictionary.

References

UNESCO definition

Note to translators

In German or in French, the word pamphlet often has negative connotations of slanderous libel or extremist religious propaganda, and should not be literally translated to or from English. Correct translations include "Flugblatt" and "Wurfschrift" in German, and "Fascicule" in French. In Russian, the word "pamflet" ("памфлет") is also normally used to denote a work of propaganda and/or satire and does not directly describe the form of publication at all, so it is best translated as "brochure" ("брошюра").

See also

• Airborne leaflet propaganda
• Brochure
• Flyer

External links

• Randy Silverman, 1987. "Small, Not Insignificant: a Specification for a Conservation Pamphlet Binding Structure", The Book and Paper Group Annual 6. Historical overview focusing on pamphlet binding.

This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)

Common misspelling(s) of pamphlet

• pamplet

Dansk (Danish)
n. - piece, brochure
v. tr. - udsende flyveskrifter

Nederlands (Dutch)
pamflet

Français (French)
n. - (gén) brochure, tract, (Hist) pamphlet
v. tr. - écrire des pamphlets

Deutsch (German)
n. - Broschüre, Flugblatt, Streitschrift
v. - Pamphlete schreiben und herausgeben

Ελληνική (Greek)
n. - φυλλάδιο, τεύχος, μπροσούρα

Italiano (Italian)
opuscolo, fascicolo

Português (Portuguese)
n. - panfleto (m), prospecto (m)

Русский (Russian)
брошюра, памфлет

Español (Spanish)
n. - folleto, panfleto, octavilla
v. tr. - distribuir panfletos

Svenska (Swedish)
n. - broschyr, häfte

中文（简体） (Chinese (Simplified))
小册子, 发小册子

中文（繁體） (Chinese (Traditional))
n. - 小冊子
v. tr. - 發小冊子

한국어 (Korean)
n. - 팜플렛, 시사논문, 작은 책자
v. tr. - 선전하다

日本語 (Japanese)
n. - パンフレット

العربيه (Arabic)
‏(الاسم) كراسه, كتيب‏

עברית (Hebrew)
n. - ‮עלון, קונטרס, חוברת‬
v. tr. - ‮חילק או הפיץ עלונים‬

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