The Annals of Conjuring

This is the first real history of magic in the English language. It first appeared in serialized from in The Magic Wand.

Sidney W. Clarke tells the story of magic from its earliest traces in recorded history, all the way to the celebrated masters of Robert-Houdin, Maskelyne, and the ones who followed them.

[Note: This edition was newly formatted for convenient reading and searching on mobile devices.]

1st digital edition 2013, 288 pages.

Table of Contents

4. Introduction
9. Ancient Conjuring
15. The Mediaeval Jugglers
29. The Jugglers’ Tricks
43. Hocus Pocus
57. The English Showmen
88. Continental Conjurers In The XVIIIth Century
114. The Decline Of Conjuring
127. The Wizard Of The North And The Mechanical Conjurers
158. Robert-Houdin
178. From Robert-Houdin To Maskelyne
200. Maskelyne And Cooke
238. Conjurers Of Yesterday And Today
262. Oriental Conjuring

word count: 134216 which is equivalent to 536 standard pages of text