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ISBN: PB: 9780226105635

ISBN: HB: 9780226105628

University of Chicago Press

January 2020

304 pp.

22.8x15.2 cm

84 halftones, 1 table

PB:
£26,00
QTY:
HB:
£74,00
QTY:

Categories:

Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema

The early years of film were dominated by competition between inventors in America and France, especially Thomas Edison and the Lumiere brothers. But while these have generally been considered the foremost pioneers of film, they were not the only crucial figures in its inception. Telling the story of the white-hot years of filmmaking in the 1890s, "Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema" seeks to restore Robert Paul, Britain's most important early innovator in film, to his rightful place. From improving upon Edison's Kinetoscope to cocreating the first movie camera in Britain to building England's first film studio and launching the country's motion-picture industry, Paul played a key part in the history of cinema worldwide. It's not only Paul's story, however, that historian Ian Christie tells here. "Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema" also details the race among inventors to develop lucrative technologies and the jumbled culture of patent-snatching, showmanship, and music halls that prevailed in the last decade of the nineteenth century. Both an in-depth biography and a magnificent look at early cinema and fin-de-siecle Britain, "Robert Paul and the Origins of British Cinema" is a first-rate cultural history of a fascinating era of global invention, and the revelation of one of its undervalued contributors.

About the Author

Ian Christie is Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Fellow of the British Academy. His books include "The Art of Film: John Box and Production Design" and "Michael Powell: International Perspectives on an English Film-maker".