The picture postcard: a new window into Edwardian Ireland

Abstract

movies in the newspapers’? (252) While several of the cohort went on to have illustrious positions, at least three of the women did not stop writing about movies, but took their talents into the fan magazines, that other contemporaneously burgeoning product that served the new industry and, like the newspaper film pages, were full of musings on stars and stardom. It is fascinating to read the later work of Grace Kingsley, Harriette Underhill and Parsons in New Movie, Picture Play, Screenland and other fan magazines and see what techniques they learned in their earlier jobs. Abel changes the active subjects he examines from that of the Variety anecdote, altering the focus from the more traditional sole man to this group of women; in this engrossing collection, he both celebrates their work and reveals them as no less ‘ambitious, courageous and undaunted’ than the Variety maidens, and as fascinated by the movies.