RESOURCES
This section covers a wide range of resources for readers to take further their interest in Victorian cinema, or Victorian life as reflected through the projected image. Follow the links on the left-hand menu for individual sections.
WEBSITES
The websites below offer an introduction to the world of Victorian cinema, including pre-cinema and optical toys. It includes the few sites offering online moving image materials from the Victorian cinema period. Also listed separately are personal sites for Who's Who figures, and general sites on the Victorian era. For a far greater range of sites covering this area and filmmaking to 1914, see the Early Cinema Gateway, a comprehensive guide to online resources for this period in moving image history.
A huge collection of biographical information on inventors of all kinds, from Leonardo Da Vinci to Thomas Edison, with some emphasis on cinema's inventors and pioneers, such as Birt Acres, Robert Paul, W.K-L. Dickson, Georges Demenÿ, Eadweard Muybridge and G.A. Smith. All gathered together by Dr Russell Naughton, with photographs and links to the sources of information. The site also features Magic Machines, a timeline history of the moving image 'from Antiquity to 1900'. Incomparable collection of early film clips from the Library of Congress, with substantial supporting information. Includes early Edison productions, turn-of-the-century views of New York, the origins of American animation, American variety acts, and views from the Spanish-American War. Available in streamed and downloadable forms, in MPEG, QuickTime and Real formats. Wide selection of pre-cinema and early cinema animations, including titles by Ottomar Anschütz, Albert Londe, Eadweard Muybridge, E-J. Marey, Lucien Bull, Georges Demenÿ, the Lumières, Max Skladanowsky and Edison. Text in Italian. Requires Windows Media Player. The Bioscope is an information resource for early and silent cinema, in blog format. It provides up-to-date on news, information, events, documents, publications, discoveries and anything else on early and silent cinema (which include the 'pre-cinema' and Victorian cinema fields). Contributions are supplied by invited registered users only (though any one can add comments). There is an RSS feed. Enthusiastic and knowledgeable site, from Dutch collector Michael Rogge, of cinema equipment, with a lengthy list of makes of different kinds of cameras and projectors, and many illustrations from his collection, with a number from the Victorian Cinema period. Includes the lavishly illustrated page One Hundred Years of Film Sizes.The Complete History of the Discovery of Cinema
An ambitious attempt by Paul Burns to trace the origins of motion pictures from 900 BC through to the arrival of cinematography at the end of the 19th century. The quality of the information is variable, too often plain wrong, and does not begin to challenge a published work such as Hermann Hecht's Pre-Cinema History (1993), but the undertaking is courageous and imaginative, and the illustrations are very welcome. The Dead Media Project, brainchild of Bruce Sterling, is a huge gathering together of evidence on forms of public communication that are now obsolete, from the pigeon post to ancient Irish fire beacons. Dead means of communicating by moving pictures are naturally included, and include made pre-cinema and Victorian cinema technologies. An amazing undertaking, strongly recommended. Eclectic site devoted to 'early vintage visual media and their usage', created by Thomas Weynants. In practice, a large number of images relating to 'pre-cinema' themes, photography, early film, the conjuring arts, and the dance of death, and so on, idiosyncratically selected and arranged. Huge and wide-ranging collaborative site on the history of photography, with thousands of photographers cited, including biographical entries on several photographers from the Victorian era who crossed over into cinematography. In 1999 London's Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI) closed. Stephen Herbert (producer of The Projection Box and co-editor of this site) has devised an unofficial on-line version of the sections of the Museum that covered pre-cinema and early cinema. Beautifully illustrated and animated, it is the first place to learn about magic lanterns, the phantasmagoria, panoramas, Zoetropes, Phenakistoscopes, chronophotography and the first twenty years of cinema. Well-researched site on the history of cinema exhibition in Europe, with sections devoted to France, Italy, Great Britain, Belgium, Spain, Portugal, Sweden, the Netherlands, Norway, Hungary, Switzerland, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Austria and Luxembourg, giving welcome detail on production and exhibition in the earliest years for each country. In English and Italian. Impressive online encyclopdia and moving image educational resource from the British Film Institute. Combines the history of British film and television, through a complex strucutre based around themes, personalities, tours and special features. Screenonline comes with a huge number of streamed video clips, which are accessible to UK educational users only (schools, colleges and libraries). Requires Windows Media Player. A developing site from David Fisher on the history of the media, including motion pictures, from their historical roots to the present day. It includes the Chronomedia section, a timeline of key events in the development of communications media, with some detailed annotations. There is particular emphasis on the Brighton and Hove pioneers of the Victorian/early Edwardian period.
The following Who's Who in Victorian Cinema entrants have web sites devoted to them:
Birt Acres - Birt Acres (1854-1918) - Film Pioneer
Thomas Edison - Thomas A. Edison Papers; Thomas Edison's Home Page; Inventing Entertainment
Frank Haydon and George Urry - Haydon and Urry Ltd
Burton Holmes - Burton Holmes, Extraordinary Traveller
Siegmund Lubin - King of the Movies
Auguste and Louis Lumière - Institut Lumière
Etienne-Jules Marey - Étienne-Jules Marey: Movement in Light
Georges Méliès - Cinémathèque Méliès; Georges Méliès; The Magical World of Georges Melies
Sagar Mitchell and James Kenyon - British Film Institute - Mitchell and Kenyon collection
Eadweard Muybridge - Eadweard Muybridge
Eugen Sandow - Sandow: Historic Photographs of Early Bodybuilders; Eugen Sandow & The Golden Age of Iron Men
Charles Urban - Charles Urban, Motion Picture Pioneer
Gabriel Veyre - Collection Gabriel Veyre
Alfred West - 'Our Navy' - Alfred John West FRGS - Film Pioneer
The following websites are useful general resources for the study of Victorianism and nineteenth-century life:
American Family Immigration History Center
British Association for Victorian Studies
Dictionary of Victorian London
The 1901 Census for England & Wales
