Stanley Collins

This is a digital reproduction of a progressive anagram based book test. It includes a handwritten letter by Stanley Collins to a Will, the instructions, and the force book titled A Holiday in Morocco by S. Martin.

Effect: Spectator chooses three cards from a deck of cards. The first card determines the page, the second the line number, and the third the word. Spectator looks up the word in A Holiday in Morroco book. You are able to determine the chosen word letter by letter. Stanley Collins uses an alphabet deck to reveal each letter.

1st edition ~1920; PDF 21 pages.

Effect: The book of love poems may be given for examination, opened at any page by a spectator, and whatever the number of the page is selected, spectator counts the words of this number and remembers same. Performer then picks up a paper and pencil, and predicts the word selected. This can be repeated with a different word.

Note: You will receive the force book (Anthology of Love Poems by S. Wynne Burne) as PDF. The easiest way to use it is to load it onto a phone, tablet or eReader and present it that way in electronic form to the spectators. Alternatively you can print and bind it at a...

From the Foreword:

Written entirely during my service in the Army and the major part of it whilst under shellfire at Ypres and on the Somme, this book was ready for the press save the sketches, early in 1919.

Anticipating almost immediate demobilisation, I determined to post to my home the manuscript that had been such a labour of love to me, with some small magical apparatus that had accompanied me during the campaign. I am still awaiting the arrival of that parcel.

Considerably lightened by the possession of an exceptional memory, my task of re-writing is now finished and I confidently...

From the Foreword:

Magicians who are seeking that evanescent "something new" which, like the Family Ghost, is very often talked about but seldom seen, will, I venture to prophesy, find "something new" in Original Magical Creations.

In penning this volume my aim has been twofold. In the first place, I have set out to describe in detail the methods by which certain experiments originated by myself are performed, and secondly my endeavour has been to teach how to perform them, which is a totally different proposition.

To carry out this plan in its entirety, the inclusion of the covering...

Stanley Collins was one of the finest card magic creators ever, and Collins's Card Conceits was his finest hour.

• The "T-Square" Colour Change
• The Comedy of Errors
• "Jumbo" Comedy of Errors
• All Fours
• A.J.A.X. 2
• A.J.A.X. 3
• Red and Blue
• Pictures and Pips
• A Card Comedy
• The Homing Aces
• Cards and Cords
• Card, Crayon and Cross-words

1st edition 1925, reprint 2007, 1st digital edition 2014, 50 pages.