Many of the Maskelyne items in the Davenport Collection were made for public consumption: programmes, publicity material, printed books, and so on. One of our shelves is occupied by books which were always intended to be private. They are the surviving business records of the Maskelynes at St George’s Hall.
The purpose of this article is to record the scope of these business records and provide examples of their content.
The book has an optically intriguing cover which produces multiple 3D images of the person looking at it, one image in each of the circular shapes on the cover. The book is full of well presented items, including a pop-up page to illustrate a particular type of optical illusion. Published by Dorling Kindersley, London in 2013.
First published in Great Britain in 1998 by Orchard Books, London. Illustrations copyright Nick Sharratt 1998.
Various types of list are included: membership lists for The Magic Circle, The British Ring No. 25 of the I.B.M. for the years 1984, 1987, 1996, 2001, 2005; Magic Collectors’ Association membership lists for 1984, 1989, 1993, 1994, 2002; Wittus Witt’s ‘International Magic Yellow Pages’ for 1990 and 1999; The W-I-S-E [Wales – Ireland – Scotland – England] section of ‘Magicians of the World’ compiled by Len Vintus in 1978.
This is used for a word prediction making use of a pack of cards. The instructions are stamped by the supplier: Charles C Eastman, PO Box 245, Haverhill, Mass., USA. The book includes the words Copyrighted 1935 by Chas. C. Eastman.
With this book and a pack of cards the magician can make amazing predictions of what audience members have selected. Complete with instructions from The Magic Wand Publishing Co.
The book was presented with ‘The Wizard’ comic and has all the cards in it. The cards describe catches, tricks, optical illusions etc. Illustrated are two of the pages and the cover of the book.
The first edition of this book was originally created and sold by Stanley Collins. It enables the magician to predict a word that is chosen at random. Davenports purchased the rights in 1942 and sold copies like this one that had been printed by Archie Byford. Included are L Davenport instructions. For further details on this edition of the book see Chapter 26 of the Edwin A Dawes book ‘Stanley Collins: Conjurer, Collector, and Iconoclast’, published by Kaufman and Company in 2002. See also Ref. no. N1337.
Published by Workman Publishing, New York, 1999.
We have two copies. One is signed to Anne Davenport by David Wood. Published in 2000 by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers. Text copyright David Wood, 2000. Illustrations copyright Richard Fowler, 2000.
