Published 1800-1899 in Magic & Conjuring: page 2

A history of the circus in Britain during the 19th century. One chapter deals with America, another with circus slang. Perhaps most interesting are the recollections of a gymnast and how he made it into the circus.

From the Preface:

A detailed chronology of places, dates and performers of fairs in and around London. We learn mostly of theatrical productions of various kinds including pantomime and dances, and menageries exhibiting exotic animals, and less so of tumbling and acrobats, juggling, balancing and the like. It includes some coverage of conjurers including Fawkes, Pinchbeck, Breslaw and others. There is some overlap of stories from Circus Life and Circus Celebrities because some performers and operators were active in both venues.

• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I: Origin of Fairs - Charter Fairs at Winchester and Chester - Croydon Fairs - Fairs in the Metropolis...

This is considered one of the best early histories of magic.

From the Preface:

This work covers a lot of ground, from various parlor tricks, chemical tricks, card tricks, to a section on two person codes, and a section on artifices of cardsharks.

• description Of The Magician's Table
• How To Make A Person Jump
• The Invisible Chicken, Or Enchanted Egg Bag, As Performed By The Celebrated Wyman
• Scrap, Or Blowing Book, As Performed By Potter
• Gun Cotton - How Prepared
• Sympathetic Inks
• Apparatus For Writing In The Dark
• Dancing Turkeys
• The Self-Balanced Pail
• Sympathetic Lamp
• The Gas Candle
• Ice Made In A Red Hot Vessel
• Magical Colours
• The Magic Nosegay Blowing At The...

Includes chapters on conjuring, fortune-telling and card-sharping.

• Preface
• Part The First. The History Of Cards
  • I. Introduction
  • II. Oriental Origin Of Cards
  • III. Introduction Of Cards Into Southern Europe
  • IV. Date Of Introduction Of Cards
  • V. Introduction Of Cards Into France
  • VI. The Cards Of Charles VI
  • VII. Invention Of The French Cards And Game Of Piquet
  • VIII. Cards In England
  • IX. History Of Tarots, As Told By Themselves
  • X. Modern History Of French And English Cards
  • XI. The Application Of Cards To Science
  • XII. Card Miscellanies
• Part The Second. Card Playing And Card Players...

The type of 'mind-reading' George Beard means here is what we today call muscle-reading, which is a term that Beard himself coined. Beard describes several experiments he conducted and describes very clearly the physiology of muscle-reading, and that it is an involuntary muscle contraction that has nothing to do with animal magnetism or thought transference.

1st edition 1877; PDF 10 pages.

The 'involuntary life' would today be described as trance or as a hypnotic state. Beard writes:

However, he was a skeptic when it came to the popular practices and explanations of these phenomena by the means of animal...

From the preface:

From the introduction:

Showing the various ways of performing tricks by sleight-of-hand on dice, cards, etc., together with many surprising deceptions.

• To change a Box of Bird Seed into a living Bird
• To thrust a Bodkin into your Forehead without any hurt
• Breslaw's grand Deception of the little learned Swan
• The mode of shewing the Hen and Egg Bag, and out of an empty Bag to bring upwards of an Hundred Eggs, and afterwards a live Hen
• How to seem to change a Card into a King or Queen
• Card burnt, and afterwards found in a Watch
• A curious trick played with a Fowl
• How to eat Fire, and blow it up in your Mouth...

From the preface:

From the preface:

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.

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...

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...

You will find here card tricks, cheating exposes, card games, and gambling stories.

A later expanded version of this book was published under the title Gamblers' Tricks With Cards Exposed and Explained.

• Chapter I
  • Invention Of Cards
  • Mysterious Trick Of Thirty Six Cards; Telling The Card You Look At Without Seeing The Pack.
  • To Tell A Card Thought Of
  • Three Jacks As Thieves, Caught By A King As A Policeman
  • To Burn A Card And Fin'd It In A Watch
  • How To Shift Cards
  • The Four Associates
  • To Make A Card Jump Out Of The Pack
  • How To Change Cards To Pictures
• Chapter II
  • All Fours
  • Deceptions Used In The Game Of All Fours
  • How To...

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...

While Robert Schenck served as ambassador in the UK, he was persuaded to write down his rules for poker by a duchess. This was the first publication to deal solely with draw poker.

1st edition 1880, PDF 6 pages.

A fairly detailed work on the rules and variations of draw poker. Also includes some advice on how to play the game successfully. This work includes Robert C. Schenck's rules for draw poker.

• PREFACE
• CHAPTER I
  • Introduction
  • The Element of Chance
  • The Question of Stakes
• CHAPTER II
  • Technical Terms
• CHAPTER III
  • The Order of Hands
  • The Straight
  • The Blaze
• CHAPTER IV
  • Rules of Draw Poker
  • The Limit
  • The Ante
  • The Straddle
  • The Deal
  • Betting Before the Draw
  • Discard and Draw
  • Betting After the Draw
• CHAPTER V
  • Jack Pots
  • Incidental Jack Pots
  • The "Buck"
  • Progressive Jack Pots
• CHAPTER VI
  • Freeze Out
• CHAPTER...

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...

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:

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...

• CONJURING TRICKS
  • The Certain Guesser
  • The Disappearing coin
  • Money Makes Money
  • A Good Variation
  • The Magic Coin Box
  • Catching the Falling Pile
  • The Flexible Watch
  • Coin and Bottle Trick
  • Needle Dart
  • The Magic Double Ring
  • The Magic Ribbon
  • The Burnt Handkerchief
  • The Vanishing Ball
  • The Wand and Ring Trick
  • Swallowing the Knife
  • The Vanishing Coin
• EASY CARD TRICKS
  • Telling a Selected Card
  • A Wonderful Discovery
  • The Twenty-one Card Trick
  • Naming all the Cards in the Pack
  • Forcing the Choice
  • The Chosen Card
  • Divination
  • Further Divination
  • The Seven Heap
  • Spelling the Cards
  • Changing...