HILLIARD, J.N. (1872 – 1935). Archive of Sleight-of-Hand Manuscripts and Letters. Circa 1905. A collection of typed and handwritten manuscript material compiled and written by Hilliard. Included are two TLSs and one partial ALS to Wosneske, a magician and juggler who worked under the stage name of “Frank Lorena,” who appears to have purchased secrets via mail from Hilliard. One letter explains, “…I have received from Vienna the secrets of about 25 of the Hofzinser card tricks. These 25 tricks have cost me just $300. I have also bought a large number of other tricks from foreign conjuring experts – getting their best secrets. The whole business has cost me more than five hundred dollars.”
The manuscript material, both handwritten and typewritten, describes many different effects, primarily with cards, with some material described in effect only, while other tricks are explained entirely, some in the format Hilliard would use several years later in the book he ghostwrote for T. Nelson Downs, The Art of Magic.
Among the many effects described are The Transfixed Pack, The Cards up the Sleeve (including Downs’ method), The Hilliard Card Change, Mysterious Divination, The Cards and Ribbon, The Ball of Wool and Coin Trick, The Hilliard Sleeve Pull, The Card Through the Hat, various coin sleights and tricks, and dozens more effects and sleights. In several cases, Hilliard describes more than one method for the same effect, and in others, when no explanation is given, the description of the effect is accompanied by a price to be paid to learn its secret.
Typed and handwritten on approximately fifty sheets, legal size and smaller, with many entries bearing extensive manuscript corrections and strikethroughs in Hilliard’s characteristic handwriting. Most sheets with heavy original folds, with some material represented in fragments or incomplete. Among the archive are four finely rendered (but simple) illustrations in Hilliard’s hand, one with corresponding text to explain the Yank Hoe coin trick (known commonly as an assembly or Matrix), and the others showing the working of a gimmicked magic wand, and two other effects. In all, a fascinating collection of the type of sleight-of-hand and subtle secrets Hilliard was known to trade in, and later, to publish; these pages reveal the starting point for the author behind two of the most important how-to magic textbooks published in the twentieth century.