Paying attention to the historically specific dimensions of objects such as the photograph, the illustrated magazine and the collection, the contributors to this volume offer new ways of thinking about nineteenth-century practices of reading, viewing, and collecting, revealing new readings of Wordsworth, Shelley, James and Wilde, among others.

The photograph found a home in the book before it won for itself a place on the gallery wall. Only a few years after the birth of photography, the publication of Henry Fox Talbot's "The Pencil of Nature" heralded a new genre in the history of the book, one in which the photograph was the primary vehicle of expression and communication, or stood in equal if sometimes conflicted partnership with the written word. In this book, practicing photographers and writers across several fields of scholarship share a range of fresh approaches to reading the photobook, developing new ways of understanding how meaning is shaped by an image's interaction with its text and context and engaging with the visual, tactile and interactive experience of the photobook in all its dimensions. Through close studies of individual works, the photobook from fetishised objet d'art to cheaply-printed booklet is explored and its unique creative and cultural contributions celebrated.

Multimedia Histories: From the Magic Lantern to the Internet is the first book to explore in detail the vital connections between today's digital culture and an absorbing history of screen entertainments and technologies. Its range of coverage moves from the magic lantern, the stereoscope and early film to the DVD and the internet. By reaching back into the innovative media practices of the nineteenth century, Multimedia Histories outlines many of the revealing continuities between nineteenth, twentieth, and twenty-first century multimedia culture. Comprising some of the most important new work on multimedia culture and history by key writers in this growing field, Multimedia Histories will be an indispensable new sourcebook for the discipline. It will be an important intervention in rethinking the boundaries of Anglo-American film and media history.

In her beautifully illustrated study, Patrizia Di Bello recaptures the rich history of women photographers and image collectors in nineteenth-century England. Situating the practice of collecting, exchanging and displaying photographs and other images in the context of feminine sociability, Di Bello shows that albums express Victorian women's experience of modernity. While attentive to the albums of individual women, Di Bello also examines the broader feminine culture of collecting and displaying images; uncovers the cross-references and fertilizations between women's albums and illustrated periodicals; and demonstrates the way albums and photography itself were represented in women's magazines, fashion plates, and popular novels. Bringing a sophisticated eye to overlooked images such as the family photograph, Di Bello not only illustrates their significance as historical documents but elucidates the visual rhetorics at play. In doing so, she identifies the connections between Victorian album-making and the work of modern-day amateurs and artists who use digital techniques to compile and decorate albums with Victorian-style borders and patterns.At a time when photographic album-making is being re-vitalised by digital technologies, this book rewrites the history of photographic albums, placing the female collector at its centre and offering an alternative history of photography focused on its uses rather than on its aesthetic or artistic considerations. Di Bello's book is remarkable in elegantly connecting the history of photography with the fields of material culture and women's studies.

The photograph found a home in the book before it won for itself a place on the gallery wall. Only a few years after the birth of photography, the publication of Henry Fox Talbot's The Pencil of Nature heralded a new genre in the history of the book, one in which the photograph was the primary vehicle of expression and communication, or stood in equal, if sometimes conflicted partnership, with the written word.
In this book, practicing photographers and writers across several fields of scholarship share a range of fresh approaches to reading the photobook, developing new ways of understanding how meaning is shaped by an image's interaction with its text and context, and engaging with the visual, tactile, and interactive experience of the photobook in all its dimensions. Through close studies of individual works, the photobook, from fetishized objet d'art to cheaply-printed booklet, is explored and its unique creative and cultural contributions celebrated.

Paying attention to the historically specific dimensions of objects such as the photograph, the illustrated magazine and the collection, the contributors to this volume offer new ways of thinking about nineteenth-century practices of reading, viewing, and collecting, revealing new readings of Wordsworth, Shelley, James and Wilde, among others.