Reading the Cinematograph

Andrew Shail is Lecturer in Film at Newcastle University.

Reading the Cinematograph: Introduction, Andrew Shail


Story 1: Our Detective Story (24 January 1897) by Dagonet [George R. Sims]


Chapter 1: George R. Sims and the Film as Evidence, Stephen Bottomore


Story 2: The Awful Story of Heley Croft (20 May 1899) by A.S. Appelbee


Chapter 2: Cinema Re-Mystified: A.S. Appelbee's Technological Ghost Story, David Trotter and Chris O'Rourke


Story 3: Colonel Rankin's Advertisement (December 1901) by Raymond Rayne


Chapter 3: The Great American Kinetograph: News, Fakery and the Boer War, Andrew Shail


Story 4: Mrs Bathurst (September 1904) by Rudyard Kipling


Chapter 4: "The Very Thing": Rudyard Kipling's 'Mrs Bathurst', Tom Gunning


Story 5: The Green Spider (October 1904) by A[rthur Henry] Sarsfield Ward, a.k.a. Sax Rohmer


Chapter 5: 'Only from the Senses': Detection, Early Cinema and a Giant Green Spider, Stacy Gillis


Story 6: Romantic Lucy (Summer 1911) by Alphonse Courlander


Chapter 6: "She Had So Many Appearances": Alphonse Courlander and the Birth of the 'Moving Picture Girl, Jon Burrows


Story 7: Love and the Bioscope: A Heart-Thrilling Story of a Deserted Bride (8 June 1912) by Mrs H.J. Bickle


Chapter 7: Melodrama, Sensation and the Discourse of Modernity in 'Love and the Bioscope', Lise Shapiro Sanders


Story 8; The Sense of Touch (December 1912) by Ole Luk-Oie [Ernest Dunlop Swinton]


Chapter 8: A visit to the cinema in 1912: 'The Sense of Touch', Andrew Higson