Legerdemain: Five Rare Books for Collectors

Highlights of Potter & Potter Auctions' Literature of Legerdemain auction featuring the collection of magic bibliographer Stephen Forrester include:

* Kellar in His Latest Mystery. Self Decapitation

Stone lithograph shows Kellar (Heinrich Keller, 1849 - 1922) seated in a chair, his disembodied head floating within a vaporous blue ring above his outstretched arms (Cincinnati: Strobridge Litho, 1898)

* Modern Magic by Professor Hoddmann (Angelo Lewis)

First Edition, first state of arguably the most important “modern” volume to describe conjuring secrets (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1876)

* The Discovery of Witchcraft by Reginald Scot

With famous wood-engraved illustrations of conjuring apparatus and the decapitation illusion, third edition, first issue. An attractive example of this classic work including some of the earliest explanations in English of conjuring tricks and their secrets, and one of the foundational texts on conjuring (London: Printed for A. Clark, 1665).

* Ionia

Quarter-sheet stone lithograph bearing a stylized portrait of the magician (Clementine DeVere) at its center surrounded by disembodied hands, with a red glow cast over the scene (Birmingham, Moody Bros., ca. 1910. 

* The Expert at the Card Table by S. W. Erdnase (pseduonym)

A very attractive example of the first edition of this influential “bible” of card table artifice that remains the gold standard of the genre over 100 years after its first publication (Chicago, author, 1902).