2.1 The Corpus Texts: Characteristics
The corpus texts belong to one particular publication format, namely that of tract or 
, i.e. they are relatively short texts (shorter than books) serving the function of mass communication. As such pamphlets could reach a large audience and exert considerable influence. Pamphlets can deal with any kind of subject matter, although those dealing with themes of pressing current interest are the prototypical ones, and they can have various functions, the persuasive (also polemic) function being typical, but the informative, instructive, and even the entertaining, functions are also not 
. Thus, pamhlets are not to be seen as a single genre or text type, but instead represent many different genres. We have tried to reflect this great variety of topics and types in the selection of pamphlets found in the corpus.
As regards text types we have, however, decided on some exclusions. Any kind of literary output, which in our definition also extends to the miscellaneous shorter writings of the well-known literary figures of the time (e.g. Milton, Dryden, Defoe, Swift etc.), was not included in the corpus, even if the 17th and 18th centuries would not have drawn this strict borderline. Early newspaper material is also excluded, as it differs considerably from pamphlets proper. A text type classification as such is not one of the corpus parameters, but the genre or similar self-descriptions of the corpus texts, if present, are provided in a special section of the header (cf. 3.2 below and Appendix V).
One of the aims of the Lampeter Corpus is to make text-linguistic and stylistic corpus studies possible and therefore all the texts included in the corpus are complete texts, not samples of arbitrarily cut-out smaller text chunks. They contain everything from the titlepage to the Finis, i.e. besides the main text also front matter (such as dedications, addresses, introductions) and appendices with additional matter (if present). As pamphlets can vary considerably in length, from one page to 64 pages or even much more, a length restriction was necessary. The minimum length of a text was set at 3,000 words and the maximum at 25,000 words. This still rather wide range was necessary in order not to restrict our selection basis too much.
