History gets recorded and interpreted in a variety of ways. In the modern era, for example, websites and social media such as Twitter, Facebook and the like allow "just folks" to record and interpret history as it happens. But from the debut of printing in the West (mid 15th century) until roughly the invention of the first commercially viable telegraph in the mid 19th century, recording and "interpreting" history as it happened was largely a matter of pamphleteering.
Pamphlets, as defined by UNESCO, are publications (other than periodicals) that range from 5-48 pages, exclusive of their covers (anything larger is a book). Pamphlets have for centuries recorded "history as it happens." The Protestant Reformation, the Counter-Reformation, the English Civil Wars, both the American and the French Revolutions ... virtually any historical event of the past several centuries that generated major controversy was a source of pamphleteering by folks trying to recruit supporters to their point of view. (The image below reproduces one of several pamphlets produced during the French Revolution, this from a large collection of such pamphlets at The Newberry Library:)
Because pamphlets have always been much quicker and easier to print than books, they have been a favored PR tool of revolutionaries for centuries. (The pamphlet below left should need no introduction. The pamphlet below right is Lenin's What is to Be Done? Held by the University of Leeds, it urges a "new vision of a Marxist revolutionary party":)
Revolutionaries, of course, have been religious as well as secular:
Pamphleteering is not, however, entirely a thing of centuries long past, as these pamphlets, produced during the Berkeley Free Speech Movement (1964) and a similar movement in Australia (1982), indicate:
Because pamphlets are by definition ephemeral, printed on whatever paper is available, by whatever means are readily at hand, most have not survived the ravages of time nearly as well as books. Those that have survived usually have done so because they were bound (usually with similar pamphlets) at some point in the past. (The image below, by way of Wesleyan University, is of a bound volume of pamphlets concerned with the issue of colonizing Liberia:)
Collectors seeking to add pamphlets to their bookshelves not only will have to contend with fragility (and consequent rarity), but also with the fact that many pamphlets (perhaps most) were produced by anonymous authors. Collectors can either view this as a chance to contribute new scholarship (if they have the time, means and inclination), or they can seek out books that already have attempted to address some of these challenges:
Either way, the hunt will likely be an exciting one....
(P.S. For some other other uses of pamphlets, click here.)
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