Pamphlet

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

The earliest appearance of the word is in The Philobiblon (1344; ch. viii) of Richard de Bury, who speaks of "" {'little pamphlets'}. 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. ==Purpose==

pamphlet signed by General Mannerheim circulated by the Whites urging the Reds to surrender during the Finnish Civil War. 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==

Pamphlets are prized by many book collectors and collectors of ephemera, particularly for the wide array of political and religious perspectives given voice by the format's ease of production. 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. ==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, event promotions or tourism guides and they are often used in the same way as leaflets or brochures. == See also ==