Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928 Paperback – December 15, 1993

I learned so much from reading this book! It delves into animators and films which typically get very short shrift in other books on the subject. I thought it was a revelation. (I originally read the book in paperback, but that volume sort of disintegrated on me as I was reading it, so I recommend the hardback if you can find it.)

Used this as a textbook in my animation classes in college. Very interesting & highly recommend for any history buffs. Also it's a paperback.

Excellent source for the history of animation.

A great book on the history of animation. It's a great find should you find yourself in such a class.

Thank you! Great.

"Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in Its Golden Age" by Michael Barrier (Oxford University Press, 1999) represents the gold standard in terms of the study and analysis of animation during the middle third of the 20th century when the Walt Disney studio reigned supreme.Likewise, Donald Crafton's "Before Mickey: The Animated Film, 1898-1928," first published in 1982, represents the gold standard with respect to animation history prior to the creation of Mickey Mouse and the advent of the Golden Age of motion picture cartoons. Crafton's book is engagingly written, broad-ranging, and ambitious. One of his objectives, stated in the preface, was to set the subject "against the background of the industrial revolution and cultural environment of the time"—a lofty and ambitious goal, rarely attempted by authors of books on animation, including Crafton's fellow scholars.Walt Disney would, in the 1930s, more fully than any of his contemporaries or predecessors, industrialize and thereby perfect the way animated cartoons were made. "Before Mickey" is must reading if only to better appreciate the nature and magnitude of that achievement.

The book is very well researched and is a valuable reference book that I will be using quite a bit.

In histories of animation there is usually a very small amount of time devoted to animation that was released before "Steamboat Willie". This book fills this hole quite nicely. The book goes into exhaustive detail on James Stuart Blackton, Winsor McCay, Emile Cohl, Otto Messmer, the Bray Studio, and animation shops that emerged from the Bray Studio. There is one chapter devoted to commercial animation in Europe from this time period. But if you're looking for a more in depth study of early European animators like Ladislas Starewicz and Lotte Reiniger, you might want to check some place else (I'm not sure where). Though one entire chapter IS devoted to Emile Cohl, this mostly deals with American animation. Those looking for information about animation outside of Western society are looking in the wrong place. As its title suggests, this book is basically a history of events leading up to Mickey Mouse.

culture générale

Very good text about early animation.