Conjuring Literature: The Magic Library

Many magicians are avid collectors of magic tricks, DVDs, books and anything else related to their passion. Some are quite fanatical and amass thousands of volumes on the art of deception, like the Conjuring Arts Research Centre in New York shown in this video. Several such libraries exist in the world, including some academic libraries have also created collections on conjuring.

The Magic Library

Beth Kattelman from the department of theatre at Ohio State University published an article on one of these collections in Theatre Survey, published by the American Society for Theatre Research.¹. Some notable academic collections of magic books and paraphernalia in Australia are the Will Alma Conjuring Collection at the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne and the Robbins Stage Magic Collection, State Library of New South Wales.² Some other academic institutions with a magic library:

• Uni­ver­sity of Texas: McManus-Young Col­lec­tion and Houd­ini Collection
• Brown Uni­ver­sity: H. Adrian Smith Col­lec­tion of Con­jur­ing and Magicana
• State Lib­rary of New South Wales: Rob­bins Stage Magic Collection.

Parallel to the literature about magic by magicians there exists a sub-genre of scientific writings from many fields of endeavour. These books and journal articles are mainly read by the colleagues of the professionals and scientists that created this work. Historians, cultural scientists, psychologists, occupational therapists, neuroscientists, film researchers and so on have deliberated on the role, workings and practical purpose of conjuring.

Most of this work is, however, locked behind pay walls and publishers charge exorbitant prices for a single ten page journal article. Over the past three years I have extensively researched this literature and created an online annotated bibliography on the science of conjuring to help unlock this vast resource.

1. Kattelman, Beth A.  (2008) The American Museum of Magic/Lund Memorial Library and Other Resources on Magic and Conjuring. Theatre Survey (49) 2: 285-293. DOI: 10.1017/S0040557408000161
2. Awcock, F. (2004). Will Alma, mas­ter magi­cian. The La Trobe Journal, 74, 15–24; Gal­lacher, L. (2006). Cast­ing the spell: Magic in books. The La Trobe Journal, 78, 71–87.