{"product_id":"9780861967117","title":"Before the Movies: American Magic Lantern Entertainment and the Nation's First Great Screen Artist, Joseph Boggs Beale","description":"\u003cp\u003eBefore the Movies is the first book about American screen entertainment in the pre-movie era. A groundbreaking study, lavishly illustrated with 330 color pictures, it is a comprehensive survey of the American artists who created early magic-lantern stories and songs for the screen. The book emphasizes the work of Joseph Boggs Beale, a pioneer in the field and demonstrates that Beale almost single-handedly created American-made screen entertainment for the generation before the movies. His lifetime output was 2,073 images in 258 sets—the screen-time equivalent of 14 full-length films—which millions enjoyed every year. The provenance, attribution, and dates of Beale’s lantern slides are discussed in detail, and a comprehensive catalog of his lantern images makes Before the Movies an essential reference volume.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"John Libbey Publishing","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47015836385520,"sku":"9780861967117","price":48.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780861967117_p0.jpg?v=1763836231","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780861967117","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}