Richard Abel's anthology Movie Mavens: US Newspaper Women Take on the Movies 1914 - 1923 reveals women's essential contribution to the creation of American Film Culture. During the early era of cinema, moviegoers turned to women editors and writers for the latest on everyone’s favorite stars, films, and filmmakers. Richard Abel returns these women to film history with an anthology of reviews, articles, and other works. Abel supplements the texts with hard- to-find biographical information and provides context on the newspapers and silent-era movie industry as well as on the professionals and films highlighted by these writers.

“A revelation! From snarky hard-talking dames to tartly respectable scholars,
Movie Mavens recovers the diverse and compelling voices of the legions of
newspaperwomen who wrote about movies during the tumultuous 1910s and early 1920s. An invaluable resource from a model film historian.”

— LAURA HORAK, author of Girls Will Be Boys:
Cross-Dressed Women, Lesbians, and American Cinema, 1908-1934