Select Secrets: Rare & Important Magicana

Kellar, Harry (Heinrich Keller). Harry Kellar’s 1886-87 Scrapbook. Clothbound album decoratively stamped in blind, gilt, and color, comprised of 75 pages filled with programs, press notices and newspaper clippings, theater diagrams, and magazine stories describing, reviewing, and explaining the shows of Kellar on his American tour over the course of the season. One bi-fold program heralds the act of D’Alvini, the “Jap of Japs” as a feature in the show, and a letterpress advertisement pasted inside the rear cover notes that “Eva A. Hewitt” (Mrs. Kellar) will perform a cornet solo in Kellar’s show. Several notations in ink pepper the pages, some of these in Kellar’s own hand. Binding rubbed, scuffed, and worn especially at extremities, but sturdy, and with contents exceptionally clean and well-preserved. A significant document chronicling one of the great stage magicians of the art’s golden age. Touring abroad was where Kellar met with his initial success, and it was undoubtedly the death of his chief rival Alexander Herrmann that opened the door to his ascendance to the role as America’s best-known magician, the reviews in this scrapbook make plain that the illusionist from Erie, Pennsylvania was just as content to play the theaters of Aurora, Illinois, Wilmington, Delaware, and Keokuk, Iowa, receiving almost universal acclaim in each venue.