Recent years have seen a wealth of new scholarship on the history of photography cinema
digital media and video games yet less attention has been devoted to earlier forms of visual
culture. The nineteenth century witnessed a dramatic proliferation of new technologies devices
and print processes which provided growing audiences with access to more visual material than
ever before. This volume brings together the best aspects of interdisciplinary scholarship to
enhance our understanding of the production dissemination and consumption of visual media
prior to the predominance of photographic reproduction. By setting these examples against the
backdrop of demographic educational political commercial scientific and industrial shifts
in Central Europe these essays reveal the diverse ways that innovation in visual culture
affected literature philosophy journalism the history of perception exhibition culture and
the representation of nature and human life in both print and material culture in local
national transnational and global contexts.
