Magic – Vols. 1-15 by Ellis Stanyon

…it is only natural to admire that which is somewhat beyond one’s comprehension; and there is a strange fascination in an art, which is so varied, so mysterious, so old, yet always so new as conjuring.–Magically Thine, Ellis Stanyon Professor Ellis Stanyon was born in about 1871 and lived through many magical periods until 1951. He began publishing his Stanyon Serials in 1899, and in the following year he began the publication of this eventually massive collection, calling it simply, MAGIC.

He wrote the entire magazine while performing and teaching magic and otherwise earning a living. In one 25-issue run alone, he presents well over 500 tricks in his Dictionary of Magical Effects, many of which are card tricks. The Cups and Balls are exhaustively described in 8 issues. Each issue contains his Original Lessons in Magic. Stage magic also abounds in this historic collection, just as workable today as nearly 100 years ago.

A Bibliography of Conjuring, containing in its seven installments reportedly more than 600 books, also including (in addition to magic) materials on gambling, scientific magic, escape material, spiritualistic phenomena, mentalism and much more.

Here is a series on Genuine Lightning Calculators as well as Henry Ridgely Evans column, Some Ancient Tricks, tracing Pepper’s ghost and other classic information. Numerous coin tricks are included, and there are even tricks within tricks. Included are all of Stanyon’s Explanatory Programmes, in which he reviews other performers acts and states his versions of the methods, much to the irritation of the performers. His exposition of The Great Handcuff Release was available only to subscribers; supposedly the May 1902 was not sold otherwise.

This limited single reprinting makes this outstanding and invaluable source of magic education and performing material available once more. You probably weren’t around for the original publication, so don’t miss this opportunity to obtain a complete file, all at one time, at a fraction of the cost of an original.