MOVABLES, MOVIES, MOBILITY:Nineteenth‐century looking and reading

Abstract

While one typically associates the phrase ‘moving pictures’ with early cinema, in fact, the term originates with a severely under‐researched nineteenth‐century literary and visual practice: the movable (‘pop‐up’) book. Interestingly, movables share several visual tendencies with cinema, and one early cinema pioneer held patents on both cinematic devices as well as movable books. This article examines the movable book's history in the nineteenth century and analyzes its various approaches to creating movement and depth on the page. Given the movable book's lack of scholarly research, the article draws on visual and media literacy's work on children's picture books plus primary source research on nineteenth‐century movables and interviews with contemporary ‘pop‐up’ authors to formulate some initial theoretical approaches on how young nineteenth‐century readers (or ‘listeners’) engaged the movable book. The article hypothesizes that the nineteenth‐century movable book's method for combining linear storytelling with visual spectacle and surprise may help explain certain visual and storytelling strategies in early cinema. Specifically the article compares the movable's traits with early examples from Eadweard Muybridge's chronophotographs, the Lumière Brothers actualities, Edison's kinetoscope films and early Méliès ‘trick’ films. Finally, the article suggests that certain formal and thematic paradigms in the movable book may even carry over into contemporary ‘spectacle narratives’ evident in Hollywood cinema today.