Right, cigarettes have technically existed where tobacco has since the early ninth century but was mostly just ground tobacco stuffed inside hollow reeds and tubes and even then primarily confined to religious ceremony. Later around the seventeenth century and the advent of fine paper when it was brought back to Spain and it started to pick up some steam. It started to move about close regions in trade movements to France, where the word cigarette actually comes from, by the 1830's. Then in the 1880's when you could get a cigarette maker to skyrocket production. The whole craze though is mostly just a 20th century thing, mostly because of the industrial ability to mass produce it and the means to market it not to mention its addictive qualities.

Why it didn't take off earlier though is because of ease of use. Compared to using a cigar (nipping it, properly heating and smoking it), a pipe (Cleaning, packing, then setting a proper burn not to mention breaking it in), handrolling a cigarette with paper was just as difficult. So, when you get a few minutes burn on a cigarette compared to the potential hours of a pipe or cigar, its easy to make a choice. The ease of production and purchase of it though made it more marketable to the populace as a whole especially as the pace of the world seemed to pick up.