Mercury 16 Press derived its name from the extended sixteenth century, the main focus of the press. Mercuries were a common name for what would now be known as periodicals or magazines and essentially offered a new form of pamphlet for readers. These pamphlets formed a variety of topics, including death pamphlets as well as medicinal pamphlets. The republication of these documents is crucial to understanding everyday life in the extended sixteenth century and to the understanding of how the genre has developed over time.