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A study exploring the visual shows, exhibitions, and entertainments that were available across Victorian Britain. Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, this book details the shows that were on offer, where and what they were, the networks and infrastructure they existed within, and, above all, how their audiences experienced them.
List of contents
- Introduction: From Shows to Networks
- 1: Pictures, Pennies, and Peripatetic Pleasures
- 2: Improving Illustration and the Illustration of Improvement, 1800-1880
- 3: Panoramas, Dioramas, and Public Hall Spectacles
- 4: The Magic Lantern as Open Medium, 1880-1914
- 5: The Coevolution of Film Shows, 1896-1914
- Conclusion: Historical Media Studies
About the author
Joe Kember is a Professor in Film and Visual Culture at the University of Exeter. His research interests include early and silent cinema, Victorian and Edwardian popular entertainments including the magic lantern, theories of film affect, and issues concerning the representation of performance. He has held research awards from the AHRC and other funders, and his book publications include
Marketing Modernity: Victorian Popular Shows and Early Cinema (2009). He is interested in the historical development of media across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and in finding ways to broaden their study across multiple and varied user groups.
John Plunkett is an Associate Professor at the University of Exeter; his interdisciplinary research focuses on early forms of moving, projected and 3D images, most notably panoramas, dioramas, stereoscopy, peepshows and the magic lantern, and the many usages of visual shows and media in nineteenth-century society. He has held grants from the AHRC, Leverhulme Trust and Yale Centre for British Art to support his research; previous books include
Queen Victoria - First Media Monarch (OUP, 2003). More broadly, he is interested in the way that the emergence of new media and technologies during the Victorian period continue to influence contemporary culture and digital media.
Summary
A study exploring the visual shows, exhibitions, and entertainments that were available across Victorian Britain. Drawing on a wealth of new evidence, this book details the shows that were on offer, where and what they were, the networks and infrastructure they existed within, and, above all, how their audiences experienced them.
