A discussion of some of history's famous practitioners of magic.

This book is the first volume in a two-volume set on the history of cinema in Ireland from the 18th century to the present day (the second companion volume is titled Film Exhibition and Distribution in Ireland, 1909-2010). What the book demonstrates is that prior to cinema there were already huge numbers of people in Ireland, from all classes, who regularly enjoyed proto-cinematic experiences through such entertainments as the magic lantern, or slide projector; the immersive large-scale paintings known as panoramas; and tableaux vivants, or theatrical-posed static representations of paintings, statues, and events. Without these entertainments - many developed by Irish inventors and pioneers - not only would cinema's moving-pictures have been unimaginable, but so, too, would the cinema space itself and the distribution of film. Ultimately, the book is offered as a contribution towards a deeper understanding of popular visual culture (and its intersection with science) in Ireland from the 18th-century onwards. *** "Kevin Rockett and Emer Rockett's book is a richly researched, engaging...picture of visual and optical entertainments in Ireland, ranging from the first phantasmagoria shows in the 1790s to the establishment of the first purpose-built cinemas....The authors build on recent work influenced by the idea that the site of an exhibition helped determine not only how it took place, but the meanings it produced and the experience of its audience." - Victorian Studies, Vol. 56, No. 1, Autumn 2014Ã?Â?Ã?Â?

Tracing the cultural, material, and discursive history of an early manifestation of media culture in the making. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, huge circular panoramas presented their audiences with resplendent representations that ranged from historic battles to exotic locations. Such panoramas were immersive but static. There were other panoramas that moved—hundreds, and probably thousands of them. Their history has been largely forgotten. In Illusions in Motion, Erkki Huhtamo excavates this neglected early manifestation of media culture in the making. The moving panorama was a long painting that unscrolled behind a “window” by means of a mechanical cranking system, accompanied by a lecture, music, and sometimes sound and light effects. Showmen exhibited such panoramas in venues that ranged from opera houses to church halls, creating a market for mediated realities in both city and country. In the first history of this phenomenon, Huhtamo analyzes the moving panorama in all its complexity, investigating its relationship to other media and its role in the culture of its time. In his telling, the panorama becomes a window for observing media in operation. Huhtamo explores such topics as cultural forms that anticipated the moving panorama; theatrical panoramas; the diorama; the "panoramania" of the 1850s and the career of Albert Smith, the most successful showman of that era; competition with magic lantern shows; the final flowering of the panorama in the late nineteenth century; and the panorama's afterlife as a topos, traced through its evocation in literature, journalism, science, philosophy, and propaganda.

"This book also includes biographies of key personalities, from Charlemagne to Wycliffe, timelines, maps, glossary, gazetteer, and bibliography."--BOOK JACKET.

Most profusely illustrated history of stage magic -- from ancient Egypt to Houdini. Rare photographs, woodcuts, broadsides, advertisements, illustrations of costumes, stage settings, apparatus, etc. 295 illustrations.

All the creatures of the forest gather round in awe as the young Queen of the Fairies surveys her realm, dressed in the finest gossamer threads, with a crown of flowers and her magical wand. Jean and Ron Henry's charming painting comes alive with this incredible pop-up scene, including intriguing flaps hiding more delights and tabs for interactive play.

It's Barbie sticker fun time! Based on the latest direct-to-video "Barbie Fairytopia" movie, the new title in this best-selling series comes alive. Girls can follow Elina as she learns the Flight of Spring to save Fairytopia, and then create their own version of the story with reusable stickers and a two-sided playboard - sure to inspire hours of creative play! + 16-page full color storybook / over 20 reusable paper stickers to create multiple scenes + A double-sided vivid panoramic backdrop for sticker play that folds out from back cover + Interactive - kids place their stickers on the sticker board to recreate the story in the storybook.

Edogawa Ranpo (1894-1965) was a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe and like Poe drew on his penchant for the grotesque and the bizarre to explore the boundaries of conventional thought. Best known as the founder of the modern Japanese detective novel, Ranpo wrote for a youthful audience, and a taste for playacting and theatre animates his stories. His writing is often associated with the era of ero guro nansense (erotic grotesque nonsense), which accompanied the rise of mass culture and mass media in urban Japan in the 1920s. Characterized by an almost lurid fascination with simulacra and illusion, the era’s sensibility permeates Ranpo's first major work and one of his finest achievements, Strange Tale of Panorama Island (Panoramato kidan), published in 1926. Ranpo’s panorama island is filled with cleverly designed optical illusions: a staircase rises into the sky; white feathered “birds” speak in women’s voices and offer to serve as vehicles; clusters of naked men and women romp on slopes carpeted with rainbow-colored flowers. His fantastical utopia is filled with entrancing music and strange sweet odors, and nothing is ordinary, predictable, or boring. The novella reflected the new culture of mechanically produced simulated realities (movies, photographs, advertisements, stereoscopic and panoramic images) and focused on themes of the doppelganger and appropriated identities: its main character steals the identity of an acquaintance. The novella’s utopian vision, argues translator Elaine Gerbert, mirrors the expansionist dreams that fed Japan's colonization of the Asian continent, its ending an eerie harbinger of the collapse of those dreams. Today just as a new generation of technologies is transforming the way we think—and becoming ever more invasive and pervasive—Ranpo's work is attracting a new generation of readers. In the past few decades his writing has inspired films, anime, plays, and manga, and many translations of his stories, essays, and novels have appeared, but to date no English-language translation of Panoramato kidan has been available. This volume, which includes a critical introduction and notes, fills that gap and uncovers for English-language readers an important new dimension of an ever stimulating, provocative talent.