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Pamphlet
A pamphlet is an unbound book (that is, without a hard cover
or binding). Pamphlets 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 saddle stapled at the crease to make a simple
book.

For the "International Standardization of Statistics Relating to

Book Production and Periodicals", UNESCO defines a
pamphlet as "a non-periodical printed publication of at least 5
but not more than 48 pages, exclusive of the cover pages, An 18th-century painting of a girl
published in a particular country and made available to the with a basket of pamphlets
public" and a book as "a non-periodical printed publication of
at least 49 pages, exclusive of the cover pages". The UNESCO
definitions are, however, only meant to be used for the
particular purpose of drawing up their book production
statistics.[1]

Contents
Etymology
History
Purpose
Collectibility
Commercial uses
See also Due to their low cost and ease of
Footnotes production, pamphlets have often
been used to popularize political or
External links
religious ideas.

Etymology
The word pamphlet for a small work (opuscule) issued by itself without covers came into Middle
English c. 1387 as pamphilet or panflet, generalized from a twelfth-century amatory comic poem
with an old flavor, Pamphilus, seu de Amore ("Pamphilus: or, Concerning Love"), written in
Latin.[2][3] Pamphilus's name is derived from the Greek name Πάμφιλος, meaning "beloved of
all".[4] The poem was popular and widely copied and circulated on its own, forming a slim codex.

History
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.[3] In some European
languages, this secondary connotation, of a disputatious tract, has come to the fore: compare
libelle, from the Latin libellus, denoting a "little book".[5]
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Pamphlets functioned in place of magazine articles in the pre-

magazine era, which ended in the mid-nineteenth century.
There were hundreds of them in the United States alone. They
were a primary means of communication for people interested
in political and religious issues, such as slavery. Pamphlets
never looked at both sides of a question; most were avowedly
partisan, trying not just to inform but to convince the reader.

Purpose
A 1918 Finnish propaganda pamphlet signed by General
Mannerheim circulated by the Whites urging the Reds to
surrender during the Finnish Civil War. [English: To the
residents and troops of Tampere! Resistance is hopeless. Raise
the white flag and surrender. The blood of the citizen has been The pamphlet form of literature has
shed enough. We will not kill like the Reds kill their prisoners. been used for centuries as an
Send your representative with a white flag.]]] economical vehicle for the broad
distribution of information.
Pamphlets can contain anything from information on kitchen
appliances to medical information and religious treatises.
Pamphlets are very important in marketing because 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.

A pamphleteer is a historical term for someone who produces

or distributes pamphlets, especially for a political cause.

Collectibility
Due to their ephemeral nature and to the wide array of political
and religious perspectives given voice by the format's ease of
production, pamphlets are prized by many book collectors.
Substantial accumulations have been amassed and transferred to ownership of academic research
libraries around the world.

Particularly comprehensive collections of American political pamphlets are housed at New York
Public Library, the Tamiment Library of New York University, and the Jo Labadie collection at the
University of Michigan.[6]

Commercial uses
The pamphlet has been widely adopted in commerce, particularly as a format for marketing
communications. There are numerous purposes for pamphlets, such as product descriptions or
instructions, corporate information, events promotions or tourism guides and they are often used
in the same way as leaflets or brochures.

See also
Long-form journalism
Flyer (pamphlet)

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Footnotes
1. "Recommendation concerning the International Standardization of Statistics Relating to Book
Production and Periodicals: UNESCO" (http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13068&UR
L_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html). portal.unesco.org.
2. OED s.v. "pamphlet".
3. Harper, Douglas. "pamphlet" (https://www.etymonline.com/?term=pamphlet). Online Etymology
Dictionary.
4. πάμφιλος (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0057:entry=p
a/mfilos). Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus
Project.
5. In German, French, Spanish and Italian pamphlet often has negative connotations of
slanderous libel or religious propaganda; idiomatic neutral translations of English pamphlet
include "Flugblatt" and "Broschüre" in German, "Fascicule" in French, and "folleto" in Spanish.
In Russian and Romanian, the word "памфлет" in Russian Cyrillic, "pamflet" in Romanian also
normally connotes a work of propaganda or satire, so it is best translated as "brochure"
("брошюра" in Russian, broşură in Romanian). (DEX online - Cautare: pamflet (http://dexonlin
e.ro/search.php?cuv=pamflet))
6. Oakley C. Johnson, Marxism in United States History Before the Russian Revolution (1876-
1917). New York: Humanities Press, 1974; pg. vii.

External links
Media related to Pamphlets at Wikimedia Commons
Randy Silverman, 1987. "Small, Not Insignificant: a Specification for a Conservation Pamphlet
Binding Structure", The Book and Paper Group Annual 6. (http://aic.stanford.edu/sg/bpg/annua
l/v06/bp06-13.html) Historical overview focusing on pamphlet binding.
19th Century British Pamphlets Online. (https://web.archive.org/web/20100323033230/http://w
ww.britishpamphlets.org.uk/) Information about a project that digitised 26,000 19th century
pamphlets from UK research libraries.
19th Century Pamphlet Collection. (https://digital.ucd.ie/view/ivrla:2617) Collection of 19th-
century pamphlets, predominantly of Irish interest and covering a broad spectrum of subjects.
A UCD Digital Library Collection.
19th Century Social History Pamphlets Collection. (https://digital.ucd.ie/view/ivrla:45000)
Collection of pamphlets relating to 19th century Irish social history, particularly the themes of
education, health, famine, poverty, business and communications. A UCD Digital Library
Collection.
Tedder, Henry Richard (1911). "Pamphlets"  (https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/1911_Encyclop%C
3%A6dia_Britannica/Pamphlets). In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 20
(11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 659–661. This contains an extensive history of the
pamphlet form from the 14th century, in England, France, and Germany.

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