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Stage Illusions
by Will Goldston

$6

(1 review, 6 customer ratings) ★★★★

PDF | by download [8.55 MByte]  
Stage Illusions by Will Goldston

From the introduction:

This is an age in which, in order to succeed, one must specialise. One conjuror will specialise in thought-reading tricks, another in silent illusion acts, another in sleight-of-hand tricks, another in the presentation of what I may call “large apparatus” tricks. This book will appeal primarily to illusionists, but I fancy that other magicians will find that it is well worth perusal. I have heard of illusionists who have produced some of their best effects by merely enlarging small sleight-of-hand tricks, and I have no doubt that some sleight-of-hand performers have been equally successful in devising new tricks by merely watching illusionists at work and “reducing” the illusions to drawing-room size.

  • Introduction

    PART I. Illusions in which an Assistant appears

  • The Mysterious Lady
  • An Indian Basket Trick
  • An Effective Change
  • A Good Levitation
  • The Glass-lined Trunk
  • The Vanishing Trunk
  • The Golden Fly
  • The Flower Girl
  • The Vanishing Lady
  • An Improved Vanishing Lady
  • A Furnished Drawing-Room and Lady produced from Nowhere
  • An Oriental Dish
  • The Rapid Transit
  • Phantom Decapitation
  • Two Sack Tricks
  • Cremation Illusions

    PART II. Miscellaneous Illusions

  • Two Tubs
  • The Spirit Blackboard
  • The Growth of Flowers
  • Sham Spiritualism
  • The Drum which can't be Beaten
  • Novel Mirror Illusion
  • The Vanishing Sketch
  • Conradi's Coin-Ladder
  • The Cauldron of Macbeth
  • A Table from a Shawl
  • The Vanishing Lamp
  • The Latest Spirit Picture
  • An Inexhaustible Coffee Pot produced from an Empty Table
  • Materializing a Table
  • A NUMBER OF BOX ESCAPES EXPLAINED
  • The Crystal Chest
  • The East to West Mystery
  • The Escape of Cinderella
  • Original Flying Handkerchiefs Illusion
  • The Gambler's Bride Illusion

1st edition 1912, 112 pages; PDF 80 pages.
word count: 16927 which is equivalent to 67 standard pages of text



Reviewed by Frederic Clement (confirmed purchase)
★★★★★   Date Added: Monday 22 April, 2024

There are the good old illusion books, like the ones of U.F. Grant, which are full of good ideas that are, for the most, still accurate and usable today, and there are other old illusion books, like this one, which have become completely useless for today's performers. Save your money for better books. Even for 6$, you probably won't get any valuable information in this book, for which almost every illusion uses a very complicated setup with trapdoors in the floor, big wire rigs with pulleys passing under the stage, etc. Almost all the methods used would make no sense for today's stage conditions and anyway, today, we have hundreds of better methods to have better effects without all the trouble of those nonsense enormities. Usually, I like reading old illusion books to get inspired for new ideas, but to be honest, I didn't find anything inspiring in this book. Plus, the explanations in a very old English style are often hard to understand and the blurry illustrations, scanned in very low definition, are hard to decrypt and often times, it's even impossible to read the words, letters and numbers written on them. This is the second worst illusion book I have ever read, just to give you an idea of how bad it is...