£150
FIRST EDITION THUS, 8vo, pp. [ii], iv, 307, [33, ads]. Original green cloth, boards rules in black, front board blocked with illustrations of hands in black, spine lettered direct in gilt, blocked in black and with red paper label. A little scattered soiling. Cloth somewhat bubbled, a little marked, stitching strained in places, paper label worn and peeling revealing gilt lettering beneath.
A Victorian conjurers' instruction book, with a murky bibliographical identity - not unusual for the publisher John Camden Hotten, who was also known for clandestine erotica. The title-page of this printing credits a Gustave Frikell, who is often identified as an alias (along with Wiljalba Frikell and Professor Frikell) of German magician Friedrich Wilhelm Frikell (1816-1903, whom Harry Houdini credits as being the first stage magician to perform in evening dress. However, we have found no other record of him using the name Gustave, and some contemporary advertisements for reissue of this volume under Hotten's successors Chatto & Windus credit W.H. Cremer, who in this version is designated the editor. Cremer's name also appears on an advertisement leaf at the end, indicating that personal instruction in some of the techniques enumerated in the book is available from Cremer at his Saloon of Magic on Regent Street in London.
The spine on most copies contains the text 'Edited by W.H. Cremer', sometimes 'Frikell & Cremer' but on this copy that space seems to have been misprinted; it has been covered by a label (seemingly original) reading 'Frikell & Cremer' but the text underneath, fragments of which are visible through chipped areas, is not 'Edited by W.H. Cremer'.
The text is described in some institutional catalogues as an unacknowledged reworking of an American publication with the same title, subtitled One Thousand Tricks With Cards, also sometimes attributed to Frikell or Cremer, but in fact a translation of the French work 'Le Magicien de Salons'. However, ads for the Chatto & Windus reissue indicate that French text was published in translation in the same series under the title Hanky Panky (also attributed to Cremer), so is unlikely to also be the direct source of this text. Clarke and Blind assert that Hanky Panky and The Secret Out 'were [both] written by H. L. Williams, a prolific hack writer of the period'.
