Houdini's Library: Book Launch with Author Eric Colleary

Talk Highlights:

• Go beyond the pop culture persona and discover the real Harry Houdini on the
  100th anniversary of his death, October 31st
• Peek inside Houdini’s home on West 113th Street in Manhattan which was packed with books, playbills, and prints that "trace the history of magic as no romancer, no historian of a single generation possibly could"
• Learn about Houdini's life in New York, from meeting his wife working on Coney Island, to cutting neckties in a factory on Broadway
• Explore collection highlights such as:
  • Reginald Scot’s 1584 volume Discovery of Witchcraft, the first book to reveal the secrets of sleight-of-hand
  • A poster advertising Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, the magician from which Houdini would take his stage name
  • A letter from Count Cagliostro c. 1789, a “mystic” caught up in the Affair of the Diamond Necklace scandal that contributed to the downfall
    of Queen Marie Antoinette

About this Virtual Talk:

Harry Houdini (1874–1926) was not only a great magician but a great collector. Every corner of his townhouse at 278 West 113th Street in New York was filled with books, pamphlets, prints, clippings, playbills, and photographs documenting the history of magic and theatrical performance. “It would cost fully a million dollars to forge the collection of evidence now in my hands,” Houdini wrote in 1908.

A few years earlier, his hopes for a fine history of magic were dashed as he read Thomas Frost’s The Lives of the Conjurers, allegedly riddled with errors. He determined to write his own history, one based in evidence, and thus began his immense theatre collection that would, at the time of his death, rival those at Harvard and the British Museum.

Eric Colleary is the author of Houdini’s Library, and the curator of the newly opened exhibition at the Harry Ransom Center in Austin, where much of Houdini’s library is preserved. This volume traces the growth of the legendary illusionist’s collections throughout his career and illustrates hundreds of his treasures—many for the first time. Given the ephemeral nature of these materials—posters scraped from siding, playbills tossed in the trash—much of what Houdini gathered exists nowhere else.

About Dr. Eric Colleary:

Dr. Eric Colleary is a curator, historian, and writer who has spent more than two decades bringing the stories of theatre, performance, and popular culture to life. As Curator of Performing Arts at the Harry Ransom Center at The University of Texas at Austin, he has organized award-winning exhibitions that uncover how performance shapes and is shaped by history, and his work has been featured in major national outlets.

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