Abstract
Moving pictures appeared in the major cities of the British Empire in the late 19th century, at the same moment that they were being introduced in Europe and North America. Over the first two decades of the 20th century the medium spread from the large urban centers of the West Indies, India, Southern Africa, and British Malaya into provincial towns and villages. By the end of the First World War ‘going to the pictures’ had become a fixture of public leisure for hundreds of thousands of imperial subjects, who were seeing movies in a wide array of urban and rural venues.
Thus does a seat at the picture show open up to us the wonders of the deep and the adventures of earth and heaven.
Washington Post, 20 August 19091
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© 2013 James Burns
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Burns, J. (2013). The Birth of the Cinema Age. In: Cinema and Society in the British Empire, 1895–1940. Britain and the World. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137308023_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137308023_2
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