Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences focuses on movie magazines, publications first produced in 1911 for movie fans in the United States, but soon reaching movie fans on a global scale. Bringing together scholars from different disciplinary and international contexts, this collection considers fan magazines as objects of material and visual history. The designer’s toolkit aided movie magazines in seducing their readers, with visual elements, such as fonts, photographs, and illustrations, plied across both editorial content and advertisements. In this way, each issue was subtly designed to stir desire in readers and moviegoers alike. By focusing on the visual aspects of fan magazines, a key pleasure for readers, this collection provides detailed examples of how visual elements engendered aspiration and longing, thus putting the visual contents of the fan magazines at the heart of every chapter.

Stars, Fan Magazines and Audiences is a highly engaging volume that reflects the newest trends in scholarship on fan magazine and stardom. Combining the concerns of film history with those of periodical studies, the book shifts our understanding of fan magazines: rather than simply historical sources, here they are treated as material objects, worthy of study in their own right. -- Agata Frymus, Author of Damsels and Divas: European Stardom in Silent Hollywood
This innovative collection of essays provides new perspectives on the film fan magazine. The wide-ranging case studies demonstrate that fan magazines around the world offered readers important and alternative means of consuming films and film stars. It is an engaging, scholarly contribution to a burgeoning field of interest. -- Mark Glancy, Queen Mary University of London

Tamar Jeffers McDonald is Professor of Film History, and Dean of the School of Art and Media, at the University of Brighton Lies Lanckman is a Senior Lecturer in Film at UWE Bristol Sarah Polley is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Kent