Genius of Robert Harbin by Eric C. Lewis

Winner of the H. Adrian Smith Literary Award

Are you having trouble finding new stand-up material suitable for stage or platform? Would you like someone to help you out? How about Robert Harbin. Yes, Robert Harbin, creator of the Zig-Zag and stages full of other classic effects. This book might just be the answer to your problems.

The friendship between Robert Harbin and Eric Lewis was a friendship made in heaven. Throughout his long life, Harbin bubbled over with new ideas and Eric had the workshop and the technical skills to build anything his friend might think up. Eric’s own creativity often found its way into these creations as they slowly took shape in his Northampton workshop. For this book, Eric has selected sixty effects that range from mental magic, club and cabaret tricks, escapes, close-up and stage illusions. Some were first published in scarce magazines but most have never appeared in print. Told here is the true story of the creation of Harbin’s legendary Zig-Zag Girl illusion. Because of Eric’s close association with these routines, besides writing and illustrating them, he was able to include many important construction details and presentational points.

Eric wanted this to be more than just a book of tricks so he has woven throughout the text a very personalized biography of his dear friend. To assist in this, The American Museum of Magic kindly lent Eric Harbin’s original scrapbooks from which we were able to reproduce numerous rare photographs that trace Harbin’s career from his early days as Ned Williams in South Africa to his unprecedented fame in England and around the world. Complementing Eric’s text is a Publisher’s Note by Mike Caveney, a Foreword by Robert Lund, an Introduction by John Fisher and a final chapter by Alan Shaxon.