Abstract
Optical shows and devices played a key role in nineteenth-century popular culture. Panoramas, dioramas, peepshows and magic lanterns were a widespread form of domestic and public recreation. The growth of optical recreations as a leisure activity parallels that of popular publishing, and this essay explores the concomitant aesthetic crossover between optical and print media. It particularly focuses on the production of a significant number of illustrated and movable books, usually aimed at a juvenile audience, which exploited the novelty of the latest optical recreation. These children's publications attempted to replicate the viewing experience of peepshows, panoramas and the magic lantern. The pervasive presence of optical recreations in popular culture meant that they exerted a creative pressure upon both the conceptual and material organisation of the book. This essay demonstrates the way that, in so far as it was possible, a raft of novelty books structured themselves as peepshows, dioramas or panoramas.
Highlights
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 5 (2007) www.19.bbk.ac.uk novelty, which was the product of developments in popular publishing, the use of illustration
Children’s books structured around popular optical entertainments remediated the aural within print culture, and, in so doing, helped to bridge the gap Ong describes between print and aurality, literacy and illiteracy
The Cryes of London, which was republished on numerous occasions, launched the genre of London Cries; subsequent series of prints in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century often included portrayals of itinerant peep-show men
Summary
19: Interdisciplinary Studies in the Long Nineteenth Century, 5 (2007) www.19.bbk.ac.uk novelty, which was the product of developments in popular publishing, the use of illustration. For children who were just entering the unfamiliar world of literacy, the appropriation of a peepshow and magic lantern aesthetic provided a way of recreating the visual and verbal within print, satisfying Alice’s desire for books filled with pictures and conversation.
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