Salon de Magie: The Klosterman Collection Part I

Vernon, Dai (David Frederick Wingfield Verner). Prospectus for Dai Vernon’s Twenty Dollar Manuscript. Dated November 21, 1932, and including the TLS from Vernon to Ernest K. Schlieldge of Hartford, CT, the original mailing cover, and the prospectus for Vernon’s landmark manuscript. The latter being four neatly mimeographed legal-size pages, folded as issued for mailing. The letter and envelope signed in ink “Dai W. Vernon.” Vernon ushered in a new era of selling secrets when his now famous “Twenty Dollar Manuscript” was published in 1932. At the time, especially considering the ongoing effects of the Great Depression, the sum of $20 was astonishingly high for instructions detailing a series of close up magic tricks, no matter how “exclusive.” But the marketing of Vernon’s miracles proved effective, and paved the way not only for his own three dollar manuscript, sold a short time later, but for other semi-exclusive manuscripts from the minds (and pens) of his contemporaries. This is the first example of the Vernon prospectus, coupled with the original mailing envelope and cover letter we have encountered; in fact, the prospectuses may be scarcer than the manuscripts themselves.