Select Secrets: Rare & Important Magicana

Houdini, Harry (Ehrich Weisz). A Magician Among the Spirits, Inscribed and Signed. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1924. First edition. Blue cloth stamped in gilt. Portrait frontispiece of Houdini and Arthur Conan Doyle. Plates. 8vo. Ex-libris of Ray Goulet on the front pastedown. Inscribed and signed by Houdini to fellow magician and the Dean of American Magicians, Frederick Eugene Powell on the front free endpaper: “To my friend / Eugene Frederick Powell [sic] / Best wishes from the / author / Houdini.” Powell (1856 – 1938) was a refined professional magician who toured the world with a show of both stage illusions and parlor effects. Best remembered as an elegant and gentlemanly performer, his show opened with the transformation of his white gloves into a live dove. For a time, Powell worked in concert with Servais LeRoy and Imro Fox as part of the “great triple alliance.” In 1922, Powell headed one of several touring companies used to promote Houdini’s film The Man from Beyond, and in the same year, he succeeded Harry Kellar as the Dean of the Society of American magicians in 1922. The fraternal organization had been founded twenty years earlier and remains the oldest magic society in the world. Houdini served as the club’s president from 1917 until his death in 1926. Powell retired to New Haven, Connecticut where he lived with the Petrie family, which owned and operated the P&L magic factory, known in the trade as the “house where tricks are born.”