Feuilleton (a diminutive of French feuillet, the leaf of a book) was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers. Its inventor was Bertin the Elder, editor of the Journal des Débats. It was not usually printed on a separate sheet, but merely separated from the political part of the newspaper by a line, and printed in smaller type. In French newspapers it consisted chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles.

Besides France, Russia in particular cultivated the feuilleton in the 19th century. The feuilleton in its French sense was never adopted by English newspapers, though the sort of matter represented by it eventually came to be included. But the term itself entered English use to indicate the installment of a serial story printed in one part of a newspaper.

In the Nobel Prize winning novel The Glass Bead Game the current era is characterised and described as The age of Feuilleton.

Bibliography

• Dianina, Katia. "The Feuilleton: An Everyday Guide to Public Culture in the Age of the Great Reforms,", The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer, 2003), pp. 187-210.

Newspapers

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