Reviews
Abstract
Laterna magica - Magic lantern, vol. 1 by Deac Rossell. Text in German and English. Translated into German by Marita Kuhn, Stuttgart, Fuesslin Verlag, 2008, 160 pp., €44.00 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-3-940769-00-8 The first volume of Deac Rossell's long-awaited history of the magic lantern - an important work for anyone seriously interested in the subject - is finally out. There have been earlier scholars, such as Franz Paul Liesegang, John Barnes and Hermann Hecht, whose contributions Rossell acknowledges in his preface (though omitting David Robinson, and listing Laurent Mannoni only as a museum person), but although he cannot totally revolutionize the versions his predecessors provided, Rossell adds scope, precision and new details, relying on an almost obsessive quest for archival evidence. Research is Rossell's greatest asset. Much writing on 'pre-cinema' relies on easy-to-find, often unreliable, published histories; although Rossell knows the work of earlier scholars, he largely bypasses their analyses and goes to the original sources, which is painstaking and time-consuming, but also gratifying for the reader. Although Rossell modestly admits that his book 'attempts to bring together into a single narrative parts of lantern history that have previously been treated separately', and that many pieces of the puzzle