Joseph Leeming (1897–1968)

This 1943 publication is subtitled, How to make magic equipment; how to perform many tricks, including some of the best tricks of professional magicians and how to give successful magic shows.

This book is an introduction to magic for young readers. The table of contents will look familiar to people who've read lots of magic books. That's because magic props for beginners are limited in variety. For instance, this book describes tricks with handkerchiefs, coins, cards, rings, string, and rope along with a few mind reading tricks. Many of the tricks can be done without any special preparation, which means that you can do them anywhere and at any time. Others require the use of gimmicks that you can make yourself.

As an amateur magician (I am known as "The World's Most Amateur Magician"), I can attest to the fact that there is real entertainment value in the tricks described in this book. I have performed many of them, not just as a young performer, but as an adult performer. For example, here are a few of the tricks revealed in this book that, at one time or another, were a regular part of my magic shows: Handkerchief from Nowhere, The Disappearing Handkerchief, The Mystic Dissolving Knot, The Wizard's Dye Tube, The Twentieth-Century Silks, The Coin Vanishing Handkerchief, The Mephisto Coin Box, Invisible Flight of a Coin, Multiplying Money, The Magic Prediction, You Do as I Do, The Svengali Seven-card Trick, Mental Magic, The Great Book Test, The Dictionary Test, Cutting a Person in Two with Tapes, Self-Tying Knots, and the Afghan Bands.

In fact, there is more entertainment value in this old 1943 book than I have seen in many of the more recent titles for beginners. For example, there are 70 effects described in this book. I have actually performed 18 (26%) of them in magic shows. By contrast, in my newer magic books, not counting the tricks that are the same as those described in Leeming's book, I estimate that fewer than 2% of the more modern effects have sufficient entertainment value to supplant any of the older Leeming productions.

This book will provide the young reader with a solid foundation in magic. Remember, practice makes perfect.… (más)