THEMES AND SETS
	Themes Magic lantern slide sets
	Themes Magic lantern slides sorted by theme.
	General
		A rather extensive collection of magic lantern slides A quick overview of the 'rather extensive collections of magic lantern slides'. These collections are spread over the various menus. For your convenience you'll find them here together on one page.
		A rather extensive collection of wonderful magic lantern slide sets In this menu, the sets of magic lantern slides are usually sorted by subject, such as, funny, health and animals. Sets that cannot easily be categorized can be found here.
		A rather extensive collection of marvellous magic lantern slides Just some nice magic lantern slides that are sometimes not part of a series or that are just worth showing.
		A rather extensive collection of nice long magic lantern slide sets While the square slides were usually shown in the larger projectors, the oblong slides were mainly used in the smaller and toy magic lanterns.
	Amusing
		A rather extensive collection of funny stories told by magic lantern slides What is funny? What is humour? When we study the sets of old magic lantern slides we sometimes get the impression that our ancestors must have had a very different sense of humour as we do.
		Funny Faces An amusing gallery of entertaining, spitting, touching, shocking, beautiful, frightening, flashy, but always telling portraits.
		Punch and Judy Punch and Judy are the hero and heroine of a comical puppet show. A lot of lantern slides depict their humorous adventures.
	The Bible
		A rather extensive collection of magic lantern slide sets depicting Biblical stories Amongst other things the Life of Jesus, Joseph, Moses, Paul, The Good Shepherd, The Prodigal Son, The Rich Fool, Calvary and much more.
		Adam and Eve A lot of beautiful magic lantern slides that illustrate the Old Testament story about Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.
		The Bible Beautiful lantern slides depicting Scripture texts from the The Old Testament, and the New Testament.
		The Lord's prayer A very special set of magic lantern slides illustrating the words of the best-known prayer in Christianity.
	Health
		On your bike! Lantern slides showing the ups and downs of cycling.
		Bad habits. Drinking, gambling, smoking In addition to its role as popular entertainment, the magic lantern was also being put to educational purposes. Religious and idealistic organisations like the Salvation Army and the Temperance movement used the effectiveness of the magic lantern as a powerful weapon against the evils of drink and other 'bad habits'.
		Father, dear Father, come Home with me now Temperance stories. The temperance movement was always willingly to use modern technology to achieve its aims and thus magic lantern slides and photography were put in when teaching the audience the evils of a licentious life.
		Birth and Death If you like it or not, every human life starts by birth and ends in death. A collection of magic lantern slides, a few concerning birth, much more concerning death.
	Fairy tales
		A rather extensive collection of magic lantern slide sets depicting famous fairy tales A few dozen fairy tiles by Grimm, by Andersen, Arabian fairy tales, and much more.
		Once upon a time...... .......there lived in Germany two brothers who gave the world a lot of stories. There names are Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, but usually we simply call them the Brothers Grimm.
		Little Red Riding Hood Probably the most famous fairy tale that does not always end the same way. Will the wolf meet a horrible end or will it survive?
		Three Jacks. Three sets of magic lantern slides in which a Jack is playing the lead. Jack and the Beanstalk, Jack the Giant Killer, and finally the children's song The House that Jack Built.
	Animals
		Animal Stories Animals always appear in the main role in these amusing magic lantern stories. What can I say more? Just have a look and enjoy.
		Living like Cat and Dog A collection of magic lantern slides depicting two animal species that always live like cat and dog: the cats and dogs. Our pets and sometimes our best friends.
		Pussy's Road to Ruin, or Do as You are Bid Some popular magic lantern sets based on the Children's book from Madame de Chatelain (c. 1845).
		Animal Alphabet depicted on magic lantern slides. We all know the alphabet books from our childhood. Discover now without effort some completely unknown animal species.
	Unions, societies, clubs
		The Boy Scouts Nostalgic magic lantern slides about the Boy Scout movement, founded in Great Britain in 1908 by Robert Baden-Powell. Complete with original readings. Included: Saint George and the Dragon A set of twelve 3.25" slides depicting the legend of the patron saint of England and patron of the Scouting Movement.
		Damon and Pythias The old Greek legend of Damon and Pythias symbolizes trust and loyalty in a true friendship.
		Masonic Slides During the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, every local post of any fraternal lodge like the Masons, owned a magic lantern and a collection of glass magic-lantern slides.
	Writers, illustrators, publishers
		Magic lantern slides after the famous stories of Wilhelm Busch Wilhelm Busch is best known for his drawings that were accompanied by wise, satiric and doggerel verse. His 'Bilderbogen stories'  are considered to be precursors of the comic strip, and..... after all also of the magic lantern slide sets. A lot of them were actually adapted to nice sets of lantern slides.
		Mr. and Mrs. Brown's adventure with a Mouse.  Some nice magic lantern slide sets from the story 'Die Maus oder Die gestörte Nachtruhe', written and illustrated by Wilhelm Busch. (also known as Mr. and Mrs Brown and the Mouse).
		Magic lantern slides after the famous stories of Charles Dickens All stories on this site now brought together in one item: 1. A Christmas Carol, 2. Marley's Ghost, 3. Gabriel Grub, 4. Gretna Green / The Old Curiosity Shop / Cricket on the Hearth, 5. Bob Sawyer's Party / The Parish Clerk (A Tale of True Love) / Scenes from "Pickwick" / Horatio Sparkins, 6.  Shooting experiences / Skating experiences / Dickens' character sketches.
		The Bottle The English caricaturist George Cruikshank published a series of eight plates 'The Bottle' (1847) about the danger of alcoholism. After the example of his etches some imposing sets of magic lantern slides appeared.
		The Water-babies Once upon a time there was a little chimney-sweep, and his name was Tom..... A wonderful set of twenty four slides from Charles Kingsley's famous children's story 'The Water-babies'.
		The Pilgrim's Progress. After this famous book from John Bunyan at least fifty different sets of lantern slides have been made by almost all famous manufacturers, Bamforth, York, Newton, Theobald, Pumphrey, Barnard, Riley, Butcher and others. Many manufacturers even released several series into this story, sometimes consisting of less than ten, but also of more than a hundred slides.  Including 'The Life of John Buryan'.
		Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland. A long story as Alice in Wonderland had to be adjusted to conform with the concept of the Junior Lecturers' Series, implying that the sets always had to consist of boxes of eight slides. And.... it turns out that there is a 'curved version' and a 'straight version'.
		Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe. Only a few other books are published in so many versions of magic lantern slides as Daniel Defoe's famous novel Robinson Crusoe (1719).
		Uncle Tom's Cabin. A lot of beautiful magic lantern slides illustrate Harriet Beecher Stowe's world famous story. Here are some of them.
		Christie's old Organ. Some Life Model slide sets after the book of Mrs O.F. Walton. Several magic lantern slide versions are known of this tear jerking story. The shows were often brought as a 'Service of Song'. Between the projected slides and the accompanying texts the audience was supposed to sing a lot of well known Christian songs.
		ABC Land, The Road to Knowledge, and Father Christmas' ABC. Two amusing sets of 16 alphabet slides for young people after the children's books published around 1890 by Frederick Warne & Co.
		Hesba Stretton, the author of Jessica's first Prayer and Jessica's Mother, among others. Hesba used her Christian principles as a protest against specific social evils in her children's books. The book that won her widespread fame was Jessica's First Prayer. Later there was a sequel, Jessica's Mother.
	World
		Countries, places, and people The magic lantern takes us to faraway countries and places all over the world and let us meet their people.
		War Scenes Roar of guns and clash of arms, heroism and insanity, snorting horses and steaming battleships, impressing warlords and perished soldiers, arid deserts and frozen seas, Boers and British, insurrection and suppression. The first who's killed in every war is the common sense.
		Dr Livingstone,  I presume ?  Stanley and Livingstone. The names of Stanley and Livingstone are often mentioned in one and the same breath because of their legendary meeting on March 21, 1871 in Ujiji, a small village on the shore of Lake Tanganyika in present-day Tanzania. In this item they meet again. The Life and Work of David Livingstone, Stanley in Africa and Stanley's Expedition.
		Racial images on magic lantern slides The way how non-western people are depicted on magic lantern slides was not always very sensitive and sometimes make us knit our brows nowadays. On the other hand we should not make the fault to describe all lantern slides that depict black people as racist. The bounds between 'funny' and 'racist' are often difficult to decide. Judge for yourself.
		Expeditions to the Arctic There are many magic lantern slides that depict the polar regions and the expeditions to the Arctic. It appears very hard to determine which set of slides was made by a certain manufacturer.
		America, as it was drawn by Joseph Boggs Beale and other artists Joseph Boggs Beale (1841-1926) was one of the few nineteenth-century artists who created artwork expressly for reproduction on magic lantern slides. He lived in Philadelphia and created there thousands of magic lantern images.
		De Ontdekking van Amerika (The discovery of America) decalcomania.
		Flags and Monarchs The history of the Union Jack and Celebrities of the Great War
	Various
		On the wild billows..... ships, boats, a raft..... everything that floats on the water (but as we see on many magic lantern slides, also very often sink).
		I Love You ! Lovely love stories, told by images on magic lantern slides.
		A Carefree Childhood Slides with children, outside the house and indoors. Children playing, crying children, small children, older children, nice children, naughty children.
	Ladies and gentlemen! We pay a virtual visit to Circus 'Luikerwalo'. There come the clowns ..... Give them an applause!
	Work for a living What did our ancestors do for a living? A choice of magic lantern slides depicting the livelihood of our grand- and great-grandparents.
	There's Music in the Air A selection of magic lantern slides on music, musicians and their musical instruments.
	Merry Christmas ! Vrolijk Kerstfeest, Joyeux Noël, Fröhliche Weihnachten, Feliz Navidad. Season's Greetings for the friends of the magic lantern.
Magic lantern slide sets
The Tiger and the Tub "Mr Long & Mr Short go for a walk.....", a well known opening sentence from a incredible story, told on several sets of magic lantern slides.
Maud Muller. A beautiful set of six hand coloured magic lantern slides illustrating John Greenleaf Whittier's poem. A sad tale of unrequited love that left us the famous quote: 'For of all sad words of tongue or pen, The saddest are these: 'It might have been!'.
How Jane Conquest rang the Bell This example of a set of Life Model Slides tells the story of a woman who is placed in a terrible dilemma: to stay at home with her little child that is dangerously ill, or to leave her house and try to save the crew of a ship in flames.
The Diverting History of John Gilpin Shewing how he went Farther than he intended, and came safe Home. Magic lantern slides after a comic ballad by William Cowper written in 1782. The ballad concerns a draper called John Gilpin who rides a runaway horse.
Dan Dabberton's Dream. The set slides of Dan Dabberton tells a tale of drunkenness and Dan's retreat from the brink of destruction. Just in time. This set is used in many magic lantern shows and it is always very much appreciated by audiences.
Dick Whittington and his Cat. Some nice sets of magic lantern slides that depict the English folk tale surrounding the life of Richard Whittington who really existed once and lived from 1354–1423. Whittington was a wealthy merchant and became thrice Lord Mayor of London.
Walt Disney: Mickey Mouse in 'The Delivery Boy' The British Ensign ltd produced a magic lantern and slides, based on the early Mickey Mouse, Silly Symphonies. The 'Three Little Pigs'. In 1933 Ensign ltd released a set of twenty-four 'Three Little Pigs' square magic lantern slides that was soon to be followed by dozens more.
Curfew Must Not Ring Tonight. A series of magic lantern slides based on a poem by Rose Hartwick Thorpe about Bessie, a young woman whose lover is captured by the Puritans at the time of the English Civil War.
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