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VISUAL DELIGHTS TWO: EXHIBITION AND RECEPTION. Edited by Vanessa Toulmin and Simon Popple. Eastleigh, UK: John Libbey Publishing, 2006; pp. vi + 266. $29.95 paper.
This collection of essays, drawn from the second Visual Delights Conference held in 2002 at the University of Sheffield, covers an extensive range of topics from the visual and popular culture of the late Victorian and early Edwardian periods. The result is a sampler that offers glimpses into a wide array of subjects, but not a deep analysis of any particular area. This is not necessarily a fault of the contributors, however, since conference papers, by necessity, are not as in-depth as longer essays written specifically for publication. The volume includes papers on such disparate topics as film censorship, stereoscopic viewing, the life of a traveling photographer, lantern-slide marketing campaigns, a habitat panorama, and the visual iconography of childhood death.
While all of the eighteen essays are competently written, a few stand out for their combination of insightful commentary and unique subject matter. Kaveh Askari's essay on "Trilby's Community of Sensation," for example, is a particularly interesting exploration of the commercial circulation of this famous George du Maurier 1894 novel about Svengali and his unfortunate protégé, as well as the visual techniques that were used to promote Maurice Tourneur's 1915 film adaptation of the same. By examining theatrical productions, tableau vivants, illustrations, posters, and photographs, Askari demonstrates how "mesmerism becomes a catalyst for visual tricks involving translation...