Anny Ondra in Alfred Hitchcock’s The Manxman (1929), based on the Hall Caine novel, from 1000 Frames of Hitchcock

The Institute of English Studies at the School of Advanced Study, University of London is hosting a one day event with the imposing title of Cross-media cooperation between the publishing, theatrical and film industries: an interdisciplinary colloquium. The event takes place Saturday 12 April, and is an output of an AHRC-funded project on cross-media cooperation in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s.

The project is looking at the origins of the syndication or marketing of an author’s rights across several media, so common today, which it locates in the 1920s and 1930s. The aim of the colloquium is to draw together research from different disciplines to examine the extent of cross-media cooperation between media professionals, agents, and authors and ask how the past has shaped practices of the present day.

And here’s the programme, which has plenty on the cross-relationship in Britain between popular literature and film in the silent era:

Panel 1
Prof Alexis Weedon (University of Bedfordshire)
Some observations on cross-media co-operation in Britain in the 1920s and 1930s
Dr Vincent L. Barnett (University of Bedfordshire)
Elinor Glyn. The Novelist As Hollywood Star
Dr Mary Hammond (University of Southampton)
Hitchcock and Hall Caine: the Victorian Bestseller on the Silent Screen

Panel 2
Dr Amy Sargeant (Reader in Film, University of Warwick)
Frederick Britten Austin: Boy’s Own Stories, Girls’ Romances and Interwar Politics
Nathalie Morris (University of East Anglia)
Eminent British Authors and the Stoll Film Company
Dr Caroline Copeland (Napier University)
Katherine Cecil Thurston’s Chilcote

Panel 3
Dr Simon Frost (Institute of literature, media and cultural studies, University of Southern Denmark)
A Toga Tale of Ingomar the Barbarian: in print, in drawing rooms, at fairgrounds and in Hollywood
Dr Lawrence Napper (University of Greenwich and at King’s College, London)
‘Not over-exercising our intellectual powers in the choice of subjects’: The Gainsborough scenario department, 1929-31

Panel 4
Dr Simone Murray (recorded presentation from Monash Australia)
What Are You Working On?: the shifting role of the author in an era of cross-media adaptation
Prof Juliet Gardiner
Talk: Contemporary adaptation of Atonement

No indication on the colloquium web page as to when it starts or ends, or whether those panels overlap, but it does tell you that it is priced at £30 standard; £20 members/concessions, that the venue is Senate House, University of London, Malet Street, London WC1E, and that spaces are limited so early booking is advisable.

Registration forms are on the site, and more information can be got from Jon Millington, Events Officer, Institute of English Studies, Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU; tel +44 (0) 207 664 4859; Email jon.millington [at] sas.ac.uk.