Bill :

The publisher of Modern Magician's Handbook (1902) was Frederick J. Drake & Co. of Chicago.

Fortasse

Hmmm. That is very interesting. Drake published a lot of little magic manuals about that time.

Posted: Apr 13, 2007 4:10am
Well, I got a fairly early copy of the Dick and Fitzgerald The Secret Out. This copy is probably a second or third printing. The copyright date is very easy to read. It is definitely 1859. One of the clues as to when one of these books was printed is the books that are advertised in the back of it. None of the post-bellum books are referenced, so I believe it was printed before 1861. My later copy has references to Civil War History books.

Also, the bulk of the type is crystal clear, not marred as it is in some later copies. The pagination and the introduction are identical to my later copy. This indicates to me that there was one basic edition with several printings.

Frank Cahill and George Arnold contributed some material to The Sociable; however, I am getting the impression now that William Dick may have actually done the editing of the book, with contributions from several different sources.

It might be interesting to see what kind of education he had.

It's very nice to see how this thread is developing. Keep up the good work, gents!

A couple of comments from the peanut gallery:

1. Compiling a "bibliography" does not a bibliographer make. Magic has yet to see a true bibliographer enter into its ranks and contribute significantly. Although they are certainly not irrelevent to conjuring literature, the compilations of Evans, Burlingame, Stanyon, Clarke & Blind, et al. are not real bibliographies if judged by the rigorous standards and protocol of descriptive bibliography. They are -- at best -- short-title checklists, and are riddled with errors. So it's exciting to see you guys go back to the books themselves for analysis rather than rely on the works of the foregoing compilers, who in many instances did not do original research and instead simply rehashed previously published "information."

2. Fortasse noted that "pulling whole chunks of text out of other people's works was not an uncommon practice in the 19th and early 20th century ..." At least in the English language (although I suspect the same goes for French, German, etc.), plagiarism is the hallmark of the very earliest English conjuring works, beginning with Sa. Rid's The Art of Jugling in 1612, and continuing through the centuries.

I'm very much looking forward to hearing about further progress with your researches, and want to thank you for sharing your work with us here at the Café.

I am so much apologize. May be this is not interesting.

In Russia we have too two books!!! "Professor Herman on Petersburg" (1858) and "Red Devil or White Magic" (1866). I hope all can realize that last book is translation of "Le Magicien des Salons". But... Some of words about first book. The 2 chapter - "Cups and Balls", of course from Guyot (I check it by http://cnum.cnam.fr/ what use long time), and... In USA (normal World) peoples use date of copyrights, but we use date of censorship and there are written "censorship of 20 December 1856"!!!! What before "Le Magicien des Salons".

I am very much apologize. I hope peoples here well know history of French books. Except Gyuot on "Le Magicien des Salons" used Decremps "Le Testament De Jerome Sharp" (1875) and on French history of Magic books there are no "great book" "Le Magicien des Salons" because this book supposed like 100% of compilations...

If somebody interesting change by scans from American and Russian books, I will be happy. Russian book was sure translated from French. If there are two books - Russian and English with same text, it means it was NOT "Le Magicien des Salons" with addition of Guyot but full French book (with Gyuot inside).

Posted: Apr 18, 2007 2:27am
Ops. Of course, "Le Testament De Jerome Sharp" was on 1786...

I recently learned of an 1820's translation of the Guyot into English. I have a feeling this may have been the source of the Dick and Fitzgerald material on the cups and balls.

I'll get some more information on this and report.

One of the things I may not have mentioned is that until 1994, if a book was published in the English language, but not simultaneously published in the US, it was in the public domain in the US. In 1994, we signed the Berne accord, which meant that we honor all copyrights in other Berne accord countries. The restoration of copyright act has taken care of the situation since then.

So, what does this mean to us? Well, Harry Stanley used Tannen's as his US publisher of record. Supreme and Andrews used Abbott's. But the Harbin book did not have a US publisher of record. BTW, in this case, the publisher doesn't have to be actively involved in the mechanics of publishing. There just needs to be a US address.