Select Secrets: Rare & Important Magicana

Houdini, Harry (Ehrich Weisz). The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin, Presented to Chung Ling Soo. New York: The Publishers Printing Co., 1908. First edition. Brown pictorial cloth, rubbed and with minor chips and wear to extremities. Portrait frontispiece of Houdini behind tissue. List of illustrations and index added at rear as issued. 8vo. Ex-libris John Henry Grossman. Presentation copy, inscribed and signed on the flyleaf: “To Chung Ling Soo / with best wishes / and compliments / of the author / Harry Houdini / Dec / 1908.” A small newspaper clipping has been pasted below the signature, which mentions a former owner of the book and his possession of it. The friendship between Houdini and Soo has been well-documented. Both magicians came up in the world of show business in New York at approximately the same time, and both made their marks in significant, if not entirely different, fashions. Soo, whose real name was William Robinson, began his career behind-the-scenes, working for both Kellar and Herrmann. As Chung Ling Soo, the “marvelous Chinese Conjurer,” he scored his own real successes in front of the curtain. Houdini struggled in carnivals and dime museums in his early days, ultimately becoming the best-known escape artist and magician of all time. Soo and Houdini both died tragically and unexpectedly, Soo having been shot on stage during a performance of the Bullet Catch at the age of 57, and Houdini eight years later, at the age of 52 the victim of peritonitis brought on by a blow to the stomach that ruptured his appendix. Laid in are a TLS from bookseller George Jenness to the former owner, John Henry Grossman, along with a page from Jenness’s list offering the book for sale, and a magazine clipping related to Soo’s untimely death. Tipped-in to the book is the cover of the Sept. 1942 issue of The Magic Circular with Soo on the cover.