A Yank in Britain

The Lost Memoirs of Charles Urban, Film Pioneer
With foreword & afterword by Luke McKernan

Documentary film producer Charles Urban (1867-1942) was one of the most important and most celebrated figures in the film industry prior to the First World War. This book contains Urban's unfinished memoirs, written shortly before his death and wholly unknown to the outside world before now. Written in a frank and engaging style, the memoirs cover Urban's troubled childhood in Cincinnati; his work as a salesman for books, phonographs, and then early motion picture film devices, Edison's Kinetoscope and Vitascope; the invention of his famous Bioscope projector; his journey to Britain to become manager of the Warwick Trading Company, and his experiences in running the premier film company of the period. Entertaining anecdotes abound of such figures as Cecil Hepworth, Joseph Rosenthal, Walter Gibbons, Burton Holmes, A.D.Thomas and William Haggar.

Luke McKernan, film archivist and historian of early cinema, introduces the memoirs and provides an afterword that covers the rest of Urban's remarkable career from the point the memoirs break off. A Yank in Britain is essential reading for anyone interested in the first years of cinema.

A5, 96 pages 23 illustrations
ISBN 0 9523941 2 X
£9.95