The first complete English edition of a 1928 French exposure classic - translated, annotated, and fully illustrated.
In 1928, the celebrated Parisian conjurer Professor Dicksonn - born the Count of Saint-Genois, protégé of Cham, and one-time director of the Théâtre Robert-Houdin - set down the working secrets of an entire era of mystification. Mes Trucs Dévoilés is his crusade against the supernatural: a witty, unsparing exposure of the magnetizers, "seers," telepaths, fakirs, and séance-mediums who preyed on a credulous public, written by a master who had spent a lifetime fooling that same public from the stage.
Never before available in English, this edition renders Dicksonn's text in full, with strict-literal fidelity to the 1928 original. Inside you'll find the anatomy of theatrical magnetism and its five breeds of confederate; the real method behind the "Bottin" second-sight act and the music-reading mind-readers; the telepathy and thought-transmission rackets; the Indian fakir's growing seed and rope-ascension; the turned cards, the guessed cards, and a long parade of stage illusions - vanishing ladies, eclipsed cages, self-decapitations, the haunted séance-room - each laid bare with its explanation. Threaded throughout are Dicksonn's own memoirs of the credulous: the Duke of Orléans's clock, the house of toads, the Senegalese prince's talisman, the bullet-proof Congolese, and the doctors and naval officers he watched science solemnly deceive.
This edition includes:
- A complete, faithful English translation of the 1928 text, front matter to colophon
- 72 scholarly footnotes supplying historical and technical context
- 90+ period engravings and plates, cleaned and restored from the original
- Translated table of contents, bibliographical note, and editorial apparatus
A note on the text: as a strict historical document, the translation preserves the author's period language and the colonial-era attitudes of his anecdotes unaltered; editorial footnotes supply context where needed. A primary source for historians of conjuring, mentalism, and the spiritualist debunking tradition - and a genuinely entertaining read for anyone who loves the secrets behind the curtain.
1st translation 2026, PDF 135 pages.
word count: 39354 which is equivalent to 157 standard pages of text
