The Pamphleteers
James A. Oliver
CATEGORY:
Non-Fiction - Journalism (early history of) Pamphlets - Literary Biography
EXTENT:
approx 125 pages with Illustrations, Annex, and Index.
ISBN: 978-0-9551834-4-7 PUBLICATION
DATE: 1 May 2010
PR URL: www.thepamphleteers.com
OVERVIEW
The Pamphleteers is an investigation into the early journalism. As a paper platform for a spectrum of religious fanatics, eccentrics, social commentators and satirists, the pamphlet evolved as a weapon of propaganda, forged between the fledgling press and emergent censorship, for powerful vested interests, political parties, governments - and revolutionists.
In an era long before the advent of the periodical press, the pamphleteers were the world’s proto-journalists.
The Guttenberg revolution of the Renaissance provided the spark and the sixteenth century Reformation the explosive fuel for the pamphleteering phenomenon.
As the pamphlet took root, then so English prose emerged from its antique form with an extraordinary rash of stylistic innovations to embrace such unlikely postures as subversive fulmination, cod polemic, ferocious satire, and manifesto.
In times of religious ferment, civil war, colonial unrest and revolution, such texts - risky or even dangerous to publish - were often the product of secret presses and anonymous authors.
At the other exposure, there were those who encountered that risk - and found notoriety or lasting fame along the way. In the hands of a select few, the pamphlet reached a level of high achievement beyond any ordinary Grub Street reckoning.
In this brief survey, the author includes vignettes on seven pamphleteers: Robert Greene, Thomas Nashe, Thomas Dekker, John Milton, Daniel Defoe, Jonathan Swift, and culminating with Tom Paine in Paris.
The Pamphleteers reveals how the work of the early journalists was driven by major historical events on the world stage (away from the dangers of domestic affairs): the Reformation, the English Revolution, the Seven Years War, and the War of the Spanish Succession, and the revolutions in America and in France. These were the great political tides that led to the birth of journalism, the periodical press, and the emergence of the fourth estate.
The Pamphleteers is itself a pamphlet for the digital age.
THE AUTHOR
James A. Oliver is an international writer, editor, and occasional journalist. He is the author of A Footprint in the Sand, an epic political comedy inspired by the end of the Cold War, and The Anarchist’s Arms, a play set in near-future London.
In 2006, The Bering Strait Crossing: A 21st Century Frontier was published worldwide.
From 2007-2009, he lived in Paris on the Ile Saint Louis, while working on the Single European Sky project.
James Oliver is presently based at a remote location for his research on The Gibraltar Affair: A Special Report from the Rock.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society.
The Editors
INFORMATION ARCHITECTS
Posted: 1 March 2010
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