Published 1800-1899 in Magic & Conjuring: page 1

A nicely produced collection of mostly puzzles, brainteasers, and some which could be performed as magic tricks. In total there are 36 problems. Solutions are provided for all of them.

1st edition 1896, 12 pages of problems, 2 pages of answers.

This work reveals a mix of card tricks and other small magic effects, science tricks, and in particular chemical stunts and experiments. It also covers the making of fireworks in some depth including how to make an artificial volcano.

Interesting was that even in 1850 it was clear that experimenting with mercury (quicksilver) was risky as the following quote from the book shows:

(Obviously, nobody should be casually experimenting with mercury. It is...

This is a wonderful account of a traveling showman's trials and tribulations in England and Scotland during the middle of the 19th century. Among other things, he was a conjurer. While this is not a book of tricks, one coin trick is explained as part of one story of his life. But much more interesting are the descriptions of various scams and the modus operandi of various ways to defraud the public by traveling hucksters the author encountered. The operation of the thimble rig is explained in detail. It is an account of how traveling showmen struggled essentially their entire life to make...

Being a record of his experience as a white slave; a soldier in the Union Army; a professional gambler; a patron of the turf; a variety theater and minstrel manager; and, finally, a convert to the Murphy Cause, and to the Gospel of Christ.

This book is an illustration of this paragraph by S.W. Erdnase:

Containing over fifty of the latest and best tricks used by magicians. Also containing the secret of Second Sight.

Excerpt from the introduction:

A collection of simple and effective experiments illustrating chemical, physical, and optical wonders.

Published by the Offices of the Chemist and Druggist. 42 Cannon Street, London.

• ANCIENT AND MODERN CHEMISTRY
  • 'The Four Elements'
  • Collecting Gases
• EXPERIMENTS WITH THE GASES
  • Oxygen
  • Nitrogen
  • Hydrogen
  • Experiments With Hydrogen
  • Composition Of Water
  • Making Gas From A Bottle
  • A Model Gas Manufactory
  • Inextinguishable Flame
  • Gas Balloons
  • Musical Flame
  • Musical Tubes
  • Carbonic Acid Gas
  • Carbonic Acid Gas From The Lungs
  • Combustion And Respiration
  • Decantation Of Gases
  • Weighing...

Containing over one hundred highly amusing and instructive tricks with chemicals.

• Chemical Affinity
• Sympathetic Inks
• Alum Baskets
• Easy Crystallizations
• To Make a piece of Charcoal appear as though it were Coated with Gold
• To Give a Piece of Charcoal a Rich Coat of Silver
• Combustion
• Chemistry of The Air
• Amateur Air Pump
• Asphyxia
• Balloon in Vacuum
• Boiling Cold Water
• A Sucking Tube
• Cupping
• The Barometer
• A Novel Barometer
• Compressed Air
• Noiseless Bell
• The Bursting Bladder
• Weight of the Air
• Spoons which will Melt in Hot Water
• Effect of Compression
• To Cover Iron with Copper ...

Being an explanation of the game, and a warning against its dangers.

Excerpt from the preface:

For the first time explains and demonstrates the great secret of her marvelous power.

In this autobiography, Lulu Hurst tells her rise to fame and fortune by performing acts of incredible strength on stage. She does this with personal recollections as well as quoting from various newspaper reports. At the time she performed many attributed her strength to some as of yet unknown or unexplainable force. But she had no unusual strength or the aid of any special force. She cleverly used mechanical principles as well as showmanship to make it appear she had super-human strength. In the second...

100 tricks for the drawing room.

Containing an extensive and miscellaneous collection of conjuring and legerdemain; sleights with dice, dominoes, cards, ribbons, rings, fruit, coins, balls, handkerchiefs, etc. All of which may be performed in the parlor or drawing room. Without the aid of any apparatus; also embracing a choice variety of curious deceptions which may be performed with the aid of simple apparatus.

• PART I. TRICKS OF LEGERDEMAIN, CONJURING, SLEIGHT OF HAND, AND OTHER FANCIES, COMMONLY CALLED "WHITE MAGIC"
  • Preliminary Observation
  • Palming Coin
  • The Magic Coin
  • To Untie a...

Roterberg was a dealer, but he also wrote excellent magic books - four altogether. The Card Tricks and how to do them is an excerpt from New Era Card Tricks. So actually he wrote only three books. The Modern Wizard was his first one. It explains tricks with silks, eggs, glasses, billiard balls, coins, candles, pill boxes and more. Roterberg has a very efficient style of describing a trick. He supplies no patter or other fluff, but still manages to explain a trick thoroughly. He packs 68 tricks or methods into merely 120 pages. He closes his book with the chapter "The Art of Magic" where Roterberg gives a crash course in how to be a good magician....

This book is the continuation of The Modern Wizard; same format almost same number of pages and same style. For example the 'handkerchief productions' are continued with methods twelve, thirteen fourteen, fifteen and sixteen. You will find many interesting plots with eggs, glasses, coins, silks, tubes, plates, flowers, nest of boxes, ...

1st edition, 1896; 112 pages.

5. Robinson's Flying Handkerchiefs
9. The Improved Soup Plate and Handkerchief Trick
10. First Method
10. Second Method
11. Third Method
12. Fourth Method
13. The Four Soup Plates and Handkerchiefs
15. The Handkerchief Coloring Trick
16. Handkerchief Productions,...

New Era Card Tricks is the masterpiece of Roterberg's publishing efforts. Scholars are pretty sure that the elusive Erdnase must have known and read this book. It is still today an extremely good and important work on cards. It is a book any serious card man should read. This is to a large part the foundation on which a lot of the later card work has been built. A good part of this book is essentially a translation of the German work Der Moderne Kartenkünstler by Friedrich W. Conradi. Richard Hatch wrote a wonderful introduction that by itself is worth reading. He starts:

In this work, Lionel Weatherly inspects and investigates stories of mirages, prophetic dreams and the experiences of historical figures like Joan of Arc. Illusionist John Nevil Maskelyne, who exposed the fraud of a number of spiritualists including the Davenport Brothers, and who created several famous illusions which are still being performed today, examines the truth behind a number of famous Eastern magical illusions. Maskelyne also scrutinizes mediumistic fraud, questioning the credibility of figures like D. D. Home and Madame Blavatsky, in an entertaining and carefully argued investigation...

Full exposition of all the various arts, mysteries, and miseries of gambling.

It is a complete exposure, of the different and various ways of deception and cheating in all the numerous games played, such as Faro, Two, Three, and Four-Handed Poker, Shuffling Cards, Roulette and Rolling Faro, Vingt-Un, Brag, Euchre, Game of Boston, All Fours, Cribbage, Whist, Dice, Stealing out Cards, Palming, Playing by Signs, Marking Cards, Backgammon, Solitaire, Playing Three against One, Spring Tables, Spring Boxes, Pulleys, Ingenuity of Gamblers, Card Manufactories, Lotteries, then modes of drawing and...

For anybody interested in Erdnase, this poker story compilation should be of interest because many poker stories are from Chicago. It was published in 1887 which means it likely overlaps somewhat with the active time of Erdnase. We are not saying you will find a story featuring Erdnase. But such poker stories, even if they are often exaggerated or purely fictional, do provide one with some sense of the times of Erdnase.

In particular, it is educational to compare the stories with the ones from Eugene Edwards' Jack Pots. There isn't any significant overlap, however one aspect is noticeably different. Eugene...

For magicians most interesting is a section with arithmetic tricks and another with legerdemain featuring effects such as letting a pen-knife jump out of a goblet, some card tricks, coin tricks, and chemical tricks.

• Of Astrological Influence
• Lives Of The Most Eminent Magicians, Astrologers, Conjurers, &c.
• On The Interpretation Of Dreams
• Apparitions, Witchcraft, &c.
• Philolosphical And Ingenious Amusements
  • A person having fixed on a number in his mind, to tell him what number it is
  • Another method of discovering a number thought on
  • A quantity of eggs being broken, to find how many there...

A translation of Les Trickeries des Grecs by M. Robert-Houdin, one of the most valuable and interesting works on the subject of card sharping.

Excerpt from the preface:

An account of the author's professional life; his wonderful tricks and feats; with laughable incidents, and adventures as a magician, necromancer, and ventriloquist.

Excerpt from the Preface:

Reminiscences of the life of humorist Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne) and pictures of a showman's career in the Western world.

A wonderful account of show business by the example of the humorist Artemus Ward during the 19th century. In particular, it describes how performers had to travel through the US during the 1860s, how they had to advertise and promote their shows, including the characters they encountered and the situations they had to master.

For conjurers most interesting is chapter 25: Spiritualism And Conjuring. This tells of how Hingston and Browne helped a conjurer by...

Familiar and scientific explanation of legerdemain, physical amusement, recreative chemistry, diversions with cards, and of all the minor mysteries of mechanical magic, with feats. As performed in public by Herr Alexander, Robert Houdin, "The Wizard of the North," and distinguished conjurors of all ages and nations.

• PUBLISHER'S ANNOUNCEMENT.
• PRELIMINARY INSTRUCTION.
• PART FIRST. MINOR TRICKS FOR SOCIAL COMPANY.
  • SECTION FIRST. Arithmetical ingenuities.
    • I. How to divine the numbers remaining in a sum which some person has thought of.
    • II. How To Find 6 Times 13 In 12
    • III. A comic dilemma.
    • IV....

As Alfredson and Daily write in their Conjuring Periodical Bibliography, Mahatma is the 'first English language magical serial of any substance'. It is a fantastic resource for historians, researchers and other treasure hunters. A few of the prominent names you will find in Mahatma are Conradi, De Kolta, Downs, Elliott, Evans, Hilliar, Hoffmann, Houdini, Kellar, Leipzig, Plate, Selbit, Trewey and many more.

Some interesting facts about this periodical are:

• Mahatma was printed in the rear of the storied Martinka's magic shop in New York City, then the central hub of all things magical.
• Among the delightful period advertisements in Mahatma are some...

A complete manual of card conjuring. This is not identical to the card sections in Hoffmann's other books such as Modern Magic etc. But this book has been released in sections under the titles Card Tricks With Apparatus and Card Tricks Without Apparatus since 1893. It appears Hoffmann was not too happy about breaking it up into parts.

• CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY
• CHAPTER II. SLEIGHT OF HAND PROCESSES, APPLICABLE TO CARD CONJURING
  • To Make the Pass
  • To Make the Pass with both Hands
  • Single-handed Pass, No. 1
  • Single-handed Pass, No. 2
  • Single-handed Pass, No. 3
  • To Force a Card
  • To Force a Person to Think...

At one point it was believed that only one copy of this book existed. This and other myths are addressed in the introduction by Frank Lehmann, who has studied this book in detail.

The book exposes various ways in which the game of Faro was crooked. It was a very popular betting game in the United States and usually was rigged in one way or another. It was published by Richard K. Fox, the proprietor of the Police Gazette.

• Introduction
• Part I
  1. The Game Of Faro
  2. The Cards In Faro
  3. Dealing The Cards
  4. Keeping The Game
  5. Technical Terms Used In Faro
  6. Laws Of The Game
  7. The Chances Of The...