As viewers, actresses, directors and writers, women were centrally involved in cinema throughout the first half of the twentieth centuryindeed film-going was the most important way in which women participated in the era’s urban mass culture. However, the significance of women’s early contributions has until now remained scant and dispersed, eclipsed in historical opinion formed through the texts of men.

In magisterial scale Red Velvet Seat restores this film culture to visibility, using women’s written accounts from the beginnings up to 1950 to understand the significance of cinema for them. Sources include fashion and parenting magazines, newspapers and literary journals, memoirs and etiquette guides, while contributors range from novelists such as Virginia Woolf, Colette and Rebecca West to psychoanalysts, poets, social reformers, labor organizers, film editors, screen beauties, and race activists. For each section, Antonia Lant and Ingrid Periz provide an introduction, explaining the historical context and linking their themes to the major social and political movements of their time, as well as to more traditionally feminine concerns.

Compendious and absorbing, Red Velvet Seat is an invaluable contribution to the history of cinema.