Feuilleton

Feuilleton (French pronunciation: ​[fœjtɔ̃]; a diminutive of French: , the leaf of a book) was originally a kind of supplement attached to the political portion of French newspapers, consisting chiefly of non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, and epigrams, charades and other literary trifles. The term feuilleton was invented by Julien Louis Geoffroy and Bertin the Elder, editors of the French Journal des débats in 1800. The feuilleton may be described as a "", and a contemporary English-language example of the form is the "Talk of the Town" section of The New Yorker.

In English newspapers, the term "feuilleton" instead came to refer to an installment of a serial story printed in one part of a newspaper. The genre of the feuilleton in its French sense was eventually included in English newspapers, but was not referred to as a feuilleton.

In contemporary French, feuilleton has taken on the meaning "soap opera".

German and Polish newspapers still use the term for their literary and arts sections.

A supplement called "Feuilleton" appeared for the first time of 28 January 1800 in the Journal des Debats magazine. The word "feuilleton" meant "a leaf", or, in this sense, "a scrap of paper". Soon the supplement became the regular column devoted to entertainment and cultural issues. It is important to note that the English term "column" means both a part of a paper and the kind of press genre.

The original feuilletons were 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. The slot was therefore nicknamed, throughout the 19th century in France, as the "ground floor".

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