The Pamphleteers
James A. Oliver
CATEGORY:
Non-Fiction - Literary Biography - Pamphleteers
EXTENT:
approx 125 pages with Illustrations, Annex, and Index.
ISBN: 978-0-9551834-4-7 PUBLICATION
DATE: |August 2008
PR URL: www.thepamphleteers.com

OVERVIEW
As an investigation into the roots of
early journalism and its evolution, James Oliver probes
the lost age of the pamphleteer.
In an era long before the advent of
the periodical press, these are the proto-journalists
of the printed pamphlet.
The Gutenberg print revolution of the
Renaissance supplied the technology for the phenomenon
of pamphleteering, which was sparked by the Schisms of
reformation in the sixteenth century, and developed in
the era of Elizabeth, the English Civil War, the Restoration,
and the Glorious Revolution.
As the pamphlet form took root, then
so English prose evolved to embrace a spectrum of techniques
and styles: socio-political barb or fulmination, exaggerated
commentary, cutting polemic, and biting satire.
In time of rebellious ferment, civil
war, colonial unrest and revolution, such texts - which
might be risky or even dangerous to publish - were often
the product of secret presses and anonymous writers.
The pamphlet, then, or the pamphleteer?
In this survey, the author recounts:
Robert Gre ene’s Groatsworth of Wit; Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal; and John Milton’s
Aeropagitica; along with the pamphleteering of Thomas
Nash, George Dekker, Daniel Defoe, Tom Paine, and Jonathan
Swift. The outcome? The Pamphleteers is itself
a pamphlet for the digital age.
James A. Oliver is
an international writer and editor. He is also 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.
. . The Bering Strait Crossing: A 21st Century
Frontier was published worldwide in 2006. In 2007,
he was invited to the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow
to review the subject. James Oliver is reported to be
working at a remote location on the the second part of
the projected trilogy Where Continents Meet
trilogy.
The Pamphleteers is also available
in hardback and digital formats. A Pamphleteers Coda
and an International Edition are to be
published in the near future as integral parts of ‘the
project'.
The Editors
INFORMATION ARCHITECTS/The COMPANY of WRITERS
Posted: 10 May
2007
Return to Press Bureau . . ?