pamphlet, brief booklet; in the UNESCO definition, it is an unbound publication that is not a periodical and contains no fewer than 5 and no more than 48 pages, exclusive of any cover.
After the invention of printing, short unbound or loosely bound booklets were called pamphlets. Since polemical and propagandist works on topical subjects were circulated in this form, the word came to be used to describe them. Librarians and bibliographers generally classify as a pamphlet any short work, unbound or bound in paper covers. Although the word tract is almost synonymous, it generally describes religious publications.
Pamphlets were among the first printed materials, and they were widely used in England, France, and Germany. The first great age of pamphleteering was inspired by the religious controversies of the early 16th century. In France so many pamphlets were issued in support of the Reformed religion that edicts prohibiting them were promulgated in 1523, 1553, and 1566. In Germany the pamphlet was first used by the leaders of the Protestant Reformation to inflame popular opinion against the pope and the Roman Catholic church. Martin Luther was one of the earliest and most effective pamphleteers. The coarseness and violence of the pamphlets on both sides and the public disorder attributed to their distribution led to their prohibition by imperial edict in 1589.
The pamphlet was popular in the Elizabethan age, being used not only for religious controversy but also by men such as Thomas Dekker, Thomas Nashe, and Robert Greene for romantic fiction, autobiography, scurrilous personal abuse, and social and literary criticism.
In France didactic and abusive religious pamphleteering gave way to a more flippant and lively writing that satirized the morals of the court and the chief ministers. The pamphlets of Blaise Pascal, known as Les Provinciales, raised the form to the level of literature. In England pamphlets gained increasing propagandist influence during the political and religious controversies of the 17th century. They played an important role in the debates between Puritan and Anglican, and king and Parliament in the years before, during, and after the English Civil Wars. At the time of the Restoration in England in 1660, the flow of pamphlets was checked, their range restricted to some extent by newspapers and periodicals. During the Glorious Revolution (1688–89), however, pamphlets increased in importance as political weapons. The development of party politics gave employment to pamphleteers, including writers such as Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, Matthew Prior, Francis Atterbury, and Jonathan Swift.
The pamphlet continued to have a powerful influence throughout the 18th century. In North America, pre-Revolutionary political agitation stimulated the beginning of extensive pamphleteering; foremost among the writers of political pamphlets was Thomas Paine, whose Common Sense appeared in January 1776. After the United States was founded, another wave of pamphleteering was caused by the proposal of a new constitution in 1787. From this material there emerged The Federalist Papers, contributions made to the discussion of government by the revolutionary pamphleteers Alexander Hamilton, John Jay, and James Madison. The Federalist may also be regarded as marking the end of the era of the political pamphlet; thereafter political dialogue was largely carried on in newspapers, periodicals, and bound books.
Noted pamphleteers of 18th-century France—Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Montesquieu, and Denis Diderot, among others—used pamphlets to express the philosophy of the Enlightenment. These pamphlets were reasoned discourses, though with the arrival of the French Revolution, pamphlets once again became powerful polemical weapons. The Revolution itself produced many popular anonymous pamphlets, slandering the queen and the nobility and commenting on events. The most complete collection of Revolutionary pamphlets can be found in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris. The Revolution also occasioned one of the most outstanding English pamphlets, Edmund Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). It provoked many replies, the most famous of which is Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man (1791–92).
In 19th-century France, Paul-Louis Courier wrote polemic masterpieces. In England the pamphlet played a part in all political movements of the 19th century. Most notable were pamphlets on Chartism, Irish Home Rule, and the Oxford movement. At the turn of the century, Fabian Society members George Bernard Shaw, Beatrice Webb, and Graham Wallas propagated political doctrine in a series of pamphlets.
From the 20th century the pamphlet has more often been used for information than for controversy, chiefly by government departments and learned societies.