In which Anna and Judith travel back to a world of secrets in Victorian London. Expect multiplatform publishing, debates about access to knowledge, a found-poem performance and a marvellous trick.
When Angelo Lewis writes a book about his boyhood love, some readers are so outraged they wish him dead…
Angelo published his book under the pen-name ‘Professor Hoffmann’, for fear that writing about a skill of deception might harm his reputation as a professional lawyer.
Modern Magic published in 1876:
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Images we discuss during the show
Recorded by Anna Faherty and Judith Watts. Edited and produced by Anna Faherty.
Incidental music: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, composed by Paul Dukas in 1897 and performed by the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in 1929. Available at the Internet Archive.
Sound effects: The sound of the typewriter came from tams_kp on freesound.org.
Theme music: Folk guitar music track from Dvideoguy on freesound.org | Typewriter sound effect from tams_kp on freeounds.org | Print shop sound effect from ecfike on freesound.org
Introduction
Personally, I’d love to write a book on whatever takes my fancy, but it’s rare to win a nonfiction publishing contract when you don’t already have a reputation in the field. Our subject today did manage to do that, and his fascination with a rather secret profession ended up positioning him as a guiding light to others.
I would like to see a version of that trick where the magician was in the basket.
Yes, well again, give us 100 pounds and we might be able to make that happen, at least in a short story.
Welcome to Bookshapers, the show that explores curious stories about the people and technology behind what we read.
This episode: Modern Magic.
I’m Anna Faherty.
And I’m Judith Watts.
We’re both publishers and writers. And we both share a nerdy fascination in the fine print of how books are written, made, marketed, and read.
Anna
As ever, Judith doesn’t know what we’re about to talk about, so everything’s as new to her as it is to everyone listening.
Judith
It’s like falling down that rabbit hole.
Anna
Well, that rabbit hole Judith takes us to 1876.
Judith
Ooh, one of my favorite times.
Anna
You’re a 37-year old barrister.
You work in Lincolns Inn Fields in London and you’re living a quiet life with your spouse and two children in the airy climes of Highgate, away from the unbearable air pollution of the city.
Judith
…like I’ve made it.
Anna
On one level, yes, but there’s more to come.
You’ve just published a book. It’s your second, though you’ll go on to write at least a dozen more. It’s an incredibly impressive achievement, and the first edition sells out in just seven weeks.
Judith
Wow, that’s pretty much a bestseller
Anna
Absolutely. And readers are busy sharing their views about it all over the place, and one says you deserve to be hanged.
Judith
Sorry?
Anna
Another makes a comment so vicious that I can’t repeat it here, but suffice to say, they also wish you dead.
Judith
I think I might have swooned…
Anna
Plus, they’d like to see every one of your books snatched and burned.
Judith
Wow. What have I done that’s so controversial?
Anna
Well, what do you think it could be?
Judith
Well, there was a lot of salacious things around at that time. People couldn’t get enough of stories, I don’t know. Maybe something religious, something against the monarchy, something outrageously political, something about women.
Anna
All those ideas are very sensible. Sadly, none of them are true.
And personally, I thought, well, maybe it’s something to do with the law, given he’s a barrister.
Judith
Oh yes…
Anna
But your book isn’t related in any way to the law. You have written about the law in other publications, and you’ve even authored a specialist text called the Indian Penal Code, a guide for civil servants embarking on their colonial career. But your new book is somewhat different.
Judith
It wouldn’t have sold out so quickly, I feel, if it was the former.
Anna
Probably not. And it’s so different and on such a salacious, shall we say, topic, that you insist it mustn’t be published under your own name.
Judith
I’m a man and I have a pseudonym in Victorian times!
Anna
Yes, because you’re so scared that its subject matter may be too detrimental to your reputation as a professional lawyer.
Judith
So is this fiction that I’ve written?
Anna
It’s a nonfiction book, and in fact, it uses a skill that this lawyer developed when writing the Indian Penal Code Book, because they wrote an instructional guide that helped people pass the exams to be civil servants. So it’s nonfiction.
So in the real-life version of this predicament, you are, Judith, Angelo Lewis. And though you’re a barrister, you do write as a bit of a side hustle. And Lewis later says of himself that he’s quite a practical literary man. But at this point in his late 30s, he’s written a handful of short stories for popular periodicals and quite enjoyed it. And then he hears that the editor of something called the ‘Every Boy’s Magazine’ is on the hunt for new material.
This is a very eclectic publication which comes out once a month, so it needs a lot of content, and it includes short stories, articles about everything from wood carving and kangaroos to thorny questions, like, ‘Was the execution of Mary Queen of Scots justifiable?’ As an aside, it concludes that it was justifiable.
Here’s the opening page from the 1873 annual, which brought together all the issues from the previous year. And as ever, dear listeners, you can see this and other archive material on our website, bookshoppers.co.uk.
Judith
That’s actually really attractive. And being a bit of a nerd about kind of layout and design, I think it’s really lovely that it uses a lovely pop of red colour. Yeah, really, really nice. Some very studious looking young boys poring over a text.
Oh, it’s a Routledge book. I’m very pleased to see that. Interesting that you say yes, so annual and but it came out monthly, and then was it bound together?
Anna
Yes. So it was a monthly publication, like a magazine, and then at the end of each year they pulled it all together into an annual and the colour, I think, is not in the magazine, but does appear in the book, both in the frontispiece and then in some, but not all, illustrations
Judith
But it’s very pretty. The border is really pretty.
Anna
So as you say, it is a Routledge book, and that’s because the editor of ‘Every Boy’s Magazine’ is a certain Edmund Routledge who was also a partner in the publishing company set up by his father, George.
And Routledge is, of course, a publishing brand that still exists today, and one we both have a soft spot for. So Judith. I know you worked there for many years.
Judith
I did. A decade, and I loved every minute of it.
Anna
And my own book that launched last year is published by them, but at that time, Routledge published more mainstream titles than they do today. And they also brought out magazines.
Judith
They did, and what I do know about them, that fascinated me, was that they were one of the first publishers to really take advantage of the arrival of the railway and they had a railway library. So I was fascinated by that.
Anna
Yeah, so those railway libraries, were they sold in like WH Smith?
Judith
They were, like on the platform.
Anna
So I wonder if the magazines were also sold there?
Judith
That would make sense, because I know, around that time, there was a massive amount of periodicals. It surprised me when you said it was monthly, because there were lots of weeklies as well, and I know they all started appearing in different retail spaces, but especially on stations.
Anna
I like that idea that maybe you’re a young boy going on a trip with your parents or something, and you could pick up ‘Every Boy’s Magazine’ and take it with you.
So Lewis sees that they’re after content, and he decides to pitch a whole series of articles, whereas he’s just done one-off stories before, and he chooses a topic that’s fascinated him since his own boyhood, knowing that the audience is other young boys, and that topic is… conjuring.
Judith
Conjuring, magical, magical. How magical.
Anna
How magical.
What does conjuring mean to you, Judith?
Judith
Conjuring… It means making something that’s… like being a fabulist. Like being a storyteller, sort of bringing something, conjuring up something that doesn’t exist.
Anna
So Lewis is what you might call, as well as being a barrister and as well as being a sometime writer, he’s also what I would describe as a magic geek.
Judith
Not a practitioner? He didn’t have that as a side hustle?
Anna
Well, at this point in his life… his interest was sparked when he was at school by a French master who showed him a “marvellous trick” and even taught him how to pass a handkerchief through his leg.
Judith
Very impressed by that.
Anna
Then he goes off and sees some magic at somewhere called the Coliseum in Regent’s Park, which was a sort of impressive domed exhibition hall. And although there was a main attraction, which was some kind of visual panorama of an earthquake in Lisbon, Lewis actually was far more entranced by a side show of conjuring. And he describes that show in particular as setting him on the downward path to becoming this kind of magic geek.
And he seeks out magical knowledge wherever he can. He buys conjuring equipment, and though he takes a break while he’s at university, his interest is reignited as a young professional, when he reads a French book on the topic. So for him, magic, he thinks, at this time, is an especially congenial subject to write about.
Judith
It is interesting, and there were a lot of shows I think around then, because I’ve got a bit of a passion about sawing a woman in half tricks, and that was happening around this time. So I know they drew big crowds.
Anna
Absolutely. So Edmund Routledge, smart businessman, is interested in the proposal for this series. But I find it… not surprising in terms of the market, because, as you say, at the time magic is flourishing, but because usually, when you pitch any piece of writing, unless you’re a professional journalist, you’re expected to set out an idea, explain why someone would want to read it, and, equally important, articulate why you’re an appropriate person to write it. And an appropriate person, I would say, is usually someone who has a reputation or following in the field, and Lewis has neither.
I mean, today, I’d say, unless you have a major social-media following or a relevant affiliation, you’d really struggle to interest a trade publisher in a popular nonfiction book.
Judith
Yes, you really need a watertight pitch.
Anna
If it’s just something that you’ve got a fascination in and… and you think it’s congenial, I don’t think most publishers would be impressed.
Judith
No, otherwise I’d have had a lot of things published.
Anna
But, nonetheless, at this point, Edmund Routledge likes the idea, and he doesn’t seem to mind that Lewis isn’t an actual practicing magician, perhaps because, as Lewis later says, “he was impressed by the extent to which I had studied the subject”t. So he really did acknowledge that Lewis spent all this time fuelling his geeky interest.
In fact, Routledge sees so much business potential in Lewis’s idea that he comes back to him and asks, “can’t you make a bigger thing of it?” And what he really wants is Lewis to write enough articles so that, after they’ve all published in ‘Every Boy’s Magazine’, they can then bring them out as a book as well.
Judith
Clever publisher. Very canny. Exactly what you should do.
Anna
It’s definitely smart publishing: getting sales in magazine format and then later in book form.
Judith
Just repurposing that content.
Anna
But it’s also perfect at that time, as you said, because there’s this real burgeoning market in magazines, partly due to the rise in compulsory education and rises in literacy as well.
Judith
Yes. And then the need for a more educated workforce. We’re post-industrial revolution now.
Anna
It’s worth pointing out, though, that this two-strand publishing strategy, publishing in the magazine and then a book would be pretty unusual today, because it’s unlikely a modern day trade publisher would be producing both mass-market magazines and trade nonfiction.
Instead, what we might see is an author building a following by releasing content on a platform like Medium or Substack, but obviously you’re generally giving that away for free, and then publishing their content in book form.
Judith
Yes. So more of different channels. Something that surrounds the work… At this time, serialisation had just become the deal. Dickens was supposed to be the most popular writer, writing in installment weekly and then building up. But there were other things, like The Mysteries of London, which came out every week and they were bigger than Dickens. But it was just such a popular format.
Anna
What I feel is quite interesting here is, it’s not like you publish in installments and then go, “oh, this was quite popular, we’ll also bring it out as a book”, so you’re sort of later doing the repackaging. It’s actually the strategy from the start: “we’ll release it in this way, and we’ll make enough content so that we don’t have to do very much later to turn it into a book”.
Judith
And I like that idea that serial publishing also had that element of participation, by readers suggesting what kind of endings they wanted.
Anna
I don’t know whether there was any participation in this, but in the end, Lewis writes 48 articles which are published between 1872 and 1876, so may have got some ideas or thoughts from readers.
Judith
I would have wanted to write to him if I were a young boy, and ask him more.
Anna
Would you have asked how to saw a woman in half?
Judith
I might have asked that.
Anna
So Routledge offers Lewis 100 pounds for these 48 articles.
Judith
Just flat fee?
Anna
I think so. But it’s about two pounds an article, but they’re very long. I tried to work out what that was in current money. That’s quite difficult. But what I did work out is that for 100 pounds at that time, you could buy six horses, or it was equivalent to about a year and a half’s wages for a skilled tradesman.
Judith
Well, I would have hoped then he would buy his wife a pretty frock because, because he had a lot of fingers in a lot of pies, and did a lot of writing, so he would have needed to be looked after. I feel,
Anna
Yes, I imagine that she didn’t see much of him, because he was either working, because he was working all this time as a barrister, or he was going to magic shows, or he was writing about magic.
Judith
Yes, that’s a lot of articles. A lot of wordage.
Anna
So given how obsessed with magic Lewis is, I expect he was actually quite delighted that Edmund Routledge expanded the scope of the project. And he takes this remit of writing 48 pieces really seriously, because at the time, he knows that books on magic are extremely scarce, at least if you wanted to read one in English.
There were a few publications that sort of showed how tricks were done or revealed some secrets. But, as Lewis writes himself at the beginning of his book and in his first article, “there is a vast difference between showing how a trick is done and teaching how to do it”. So he takes that skill, as I said, that he used in the Indian Penal Code book, and decides to offer clear and concise instructions that go further than other conjuring books and explain how to actually perform the tricks.
Judith
That is a real unique selling point for that, because, for myself, I’ve often asked people how tricks are done, but then try to do something myself with a card deck, and it’s been a disaster.
Anna
Yes, but my immediate question discovering this was, how’s he going to do that if he’s not a magician himself? It’s all very well going to magic shows, but how’s he going to make sure that he can actually talk through the detail of what the magician is doing?
Judith
I don’t know. Did he apprentice himself to anyone?
Anna
I love the idea of being a 37-year-old barrister who becomes an apprentice to a jobbing magician.
Well, interestingly, nine years after ‘Modern Magic’ came out, he published a fictional story, a book for young boys called ‘Conjurer Dick’, which followed a boy called Dick who becomes apprenticed to an eccentric alcoholic magician.
Judith
Fantasy?
Anna
Maybe, but then the moral of the story seems to be that conjuring leads to financial, social and emotional instability. And, in fact, the young hero, Dick doesn’t end up becoming a magician in the end, despite his interest at the start. Like Lewis, he pursues a career as a lawyer.
Judith
Now that is interesting.
Anna
So maybe ‘Conjurer Dick’ isn’t so much about his imagined fantasy. Maybe it was like, this is what he thought of as a boy, that he did want to be a magician, and then later on, he finds out, really he just wants to be a barrister.
Judith
It’s a step too far for Lewis.
Anna
Yes, he likes his quiet life in Highgate, I feel.
So he doesn’t become an apprentice, but he still only really learned a lot about theory. So he does take some steps to really understand the practice. It’s like he’s a really committed author here.
Judith
So does he do it himself? He practises on his family or friends?
Anna
He doesn’t mention practising with his family, but you asked about whether Lewis was a performer, a practitioner… And apparently he only really performed at literary institutes and in friends’ houses, and he even stopped doing that in the mid-1880s because he said the strain upon an amateur’s nerves is “too great to be healthy for a man who does much brain work in other ways”. So I think he’s saying, because he’s like a barrister who’s thinking really hard and deeply, he can’t also put energy into being a magician.
Judith
Oh, or do you think he was just shy?
Anna
Well, he does say that he was good at the patter, actually, as you might expect from a talented writer, but he was less good at performing.
Judith
Which is really, also really important part of it, in terms of getting us all to come along with you.
Anna
Basically, he goes about, kind of filling that knowledge deficit by taking a series of lessons from a magician he describes as “a clever drawing room performer”. It’s a person who also runs a magic shop.
He then studies card conjuring, specifically, with an enigmatic card magician known as Charlier.
Judith
Oh, was Charlier doing the rounds?
Anna
He’s described in something I read as enigmatic. So I thought, well, I want to know what that means, so I tried to find out. And basically, he’s only reported to have performed once, so I don’t even know how
Judith
That’s very enigmatic…
Anna
I don’t even know how Lewis heard of him! And then when you do read various reports of him, his background and nationality seems to vary depending on who you speak to, so he clearly was fostering this enigmatic persona.
Judith
And that’s magic folks.
Anna
And finally, Lewis does go to see magic shows, and often goes to the same one again and again, so he can really scrutinise what the magician is doing.
Judith
Well, it’s a good plan, yes.
Anna
I’m guessing Lewis might have spent quite a lot of his 100 pound author fee on all this kind of lessons and research. But that’s great, isn’t it? I mean, personally, I’m all for doing jobs that fund a quirky interest.
Judith
Absolutely.
Anna
And I guess, as a barrister with a house in Highgate, he probably doesn’t need the money.
Judith
That would be true.
And what a joy to be able to do that as a hobby, but more than that, as a professional writer, on the side.
Anna
So if anyone wants to pay Judith to explore and research how women are sawed in half, I’m sure you’d accept that fee.
Judith
I would accept 100 pounds, actually at this rate.
Anna
You heard it here first.
Because of all this, Lewis ends up with what ‘Tatler’ magazine described in a review as “a vast knowledge of conjuring matters”. And he’s able to write what another reviewer describes as “almost a ‘Cyclopedia of marvellous tricks”. So he covers everything from age old things like cups and balls to cutting-edge illusions like the splendidly named Colonel Stodare’s Sphinx, which apparently caused a sensation when it debuted about a decade earlier.
To give you an idea, here’s a page from the contents. And for me, this list of tricks feels a little like a found poem, just the names of them and everything. So, I wondered if you’d like to read some of them out in poetic style?
Judith
I would actually, but I’d like to say that they’re all prefaced by “the”.
Anna
Yes.
Judith
So I’m going to start in this fabulous contents list,
Inexhaustible box
Japanese inexhaustible boxes
Feast of lanterns
Butterfly trick
Wizard’s omelet
Rose in a glass vase
Chinese rings
Charmed bullet
Birth of flowers
Mysterious salver
Vanishing die
Die dissolving in a pocket handkerchief
Die and orange
Vanishing canary bird and cage
Crystal balls
Flags of all nations
And the umbrella trick
Anna
I mean, a real cornucopia of amazing things. Just from the titles, I want to know what most of them are about.
Judith
Completely. I mean, the charmed bullet and the crystal balls…
Anna
Some of these tricks could be learned in a few hours, but to master others, you’d really need to practice for weeks or months. So it’s not something that every boy, despite the title of the magazine, could really take and work with. But Lewis is, however, keen to point out that anyone can perform any of these marvellous tricks, so long as, he says, that they commit to perseverance – a good Victorian value. Then he reinforces this with the immortal line, “a wizard is not to be made in a day”.
Judith
That’s excellent. Yes, so even I could perform the feast of the lanterns? If I studied?
Anna
He says, if you diligently follow the instructions so…
Judith
I think they’d have to be really clear.
Anna
So if you diligently follow them, in due time, you’ll be able to astonish your friends by rolling two rabbits into one, producing bowls of goldfish from pocket handkerchiefs, or even, in fact, producing lighted lanterns from empty hats.
Judith
This is the kind of thing I’d like to do down the pub.
Anna
It’s a good reason to spend a lot of time in the pub, certainly.
So I do tend to believe that we could do this Judith.
Judith
Even me?
Anna
As long as you can follow instructions, that for me is the key.
Judith
I can’t bake.
Anna
You can’t bake?
Judith
But it’s the same thing. It’s following instructions.
Anna
So, so maybe it’s not for you.
He knows all this stuff about conjuring, one reviewer says that the first principles of the art are so clearly explained “that any person with a fairly supple hand and some histrionic power may hope, by the book’s assistance, to become a very fair conjurer”. So if you have a supple hand and some histrionic power, you could become a fair conjurer. Judith.
Judith
I would be really pleased to be a conjurer, but I’m hoping that he also brought this out for girls?
Anna
Well, it was really a hobby for boys at the time, and all the magicians were male, although they did have, as still today, female assistants. So unfortunately, this is a very masculine world that we’re in.
Judith
That’s why we never got sawing a man in half.
Anna
No, but maybe, maybe this is a chance, again, that 100 pounds people, if you have it, maybe we could spend 100 pounds trying to develop a how to saw a man in half trick and writing about it.
Judith
Excellent.
Anna
I feel like there’s a short story in there anyway.
The same review says Lewis has great power of describing even the most complicated movements in clear and accurate language. So I thought I’d actually put that claim to the test, and I’d like to show you a trick I learned from the book.
Judith
Oh I’m so excited.
Anna
So I have a pack of cards here Judith, which I split into two sections. One section is all the non-picture cards. So I’m just showing that to you so you can see that there’s no…
Judith
I can verify.
Anna
I can even pass it over to you, in case you think I’m using sleight of hand to hide any away.
Judith
Absolutely, I’d like to see that they’re real cards as well, that there’s nothing strange in here. Yep.
Anna
And this, again, is just the picture cards. Happy with that?
Judith
That’s right. Yeah, I’m happy with that.
Anna
I’m just going to take the Four Kings out of here and if you like, you can shuffle the pack.
Judith
I absolutely want to shuffle.
Not sure I trust you at this stage. I never trust any magicians.
Anna
Okay, so it’s not personal.
Judith
No. I feel satisfied. There’s nothing afoot.
What I’m going to do is I’m going to take these four kings and put them on the top of the pack, and then what I want to do is distribute them throughout the pack. So we’ve got this one here which we’re going to put at the bottom, we’ve got one here that we’re going to put two thirds of the way down, one here that we’re going to put about a third of the way down, and then the last one, which stays on the top.
Judith
I just absolutely love that you’ve done this.
Anna
And now I’d like you to cut the pack.
Judith
Anywhere?
Anna
Anywhere you like.
I’m going to say the magic words, Abracadabra.
And hopefully, if this has worked, according to following instructions, what I’ve done is I’ve brought all the kings together because they’re feeling a bit lonely.
Judith
Oh!
Anna
And they want to be all together, so we’re just going to fan the pack out until we get to a king, and hopefully he’ll be with his three other pals.
There’s one. There’s two. There’s three. There’s four.
Judith
Oh, you are kidding
Anna
And there’s no other kings in the pack.
Judith
There are not.
Anna, you’re a magician! I’m really, really impressed.
Anna
And that didn’t take me weeks or months of practice.
Judith
That is a really cool parlour trick.
Anna
It shows that he knows his stuff, in terms of not only knowing his tricks, but also he described it so well that I managed to learn that pretty much in five minutes.
Of course, for a trick like that, that’s quite simple, just describing it is enough, because you don’t really need a picture of the kings or whatever. But for some of the more complex tricks, like sawing a woman in half or things like that, you need some illustrations to really understand what’s going on. And for some of the more complex card and coin tricks, you really need to know where magicians’ hands are and what they’re doing to conceal things. T book therefore sets itself apart, as well, by including over 300 illustrations which show the precise positioning of what the magician is doing.
Well, I’d like to share some of them with you now. So, I actually have the book ‘Modern Magic’ with a lovely red title and a magician’s wand on the front.
Judith
It’s quite a magical typeface as well, isn’t it?
Anna
And modern as well.
Judith
Very modern.
Anna
Feel free to have a flick through.
Judith
Just sniffing it as it goes past…
Lovely. They’re actually really, really clear illustrations of hands, but I can actually see where, exactly where they’re holding the coin in relation to the palm and half hidden under the fingers. So actually, it makes sleight of hand really, kind of obvious. I’m really impressed.
Oh, this one’s about a box and putting a watch inside a box. They’re really, really detailed. He had a very good technique.
Anna
He drew these illustrations by hand that he annotated. Then the publisher commissioned somebody to create. And I think they were woodblock illustrations, so they will have required somebody to carve them out, which is a lot of work for 300 illustrations and all that detail.
Judith
And what I like is this clear directions. I’m looking at one now about working with a pair of dice, and it’s, yeah, it’s really clear where you should put them and how you hold them very tightly, between forefinger and thumb. And I can see there’s a lot of really good text as well. That’s really clear.
Oh, the ro… oh, I’ve just found the rose in the glass vase. Oh, genius piece of apparatus.
Oh, oh, this has to be my favorite. I think it is the levitating woman, yes, the levitating woman. And she is actually levitating what, in this seems like a very sharp pole.
Anna
I assume the pole is rising her up, and somehow in reality, it gets covered in some kind of magician’s cloak or something.
The thing is, though, that those diagrams required some serious investments, and they cost at least twice what Lewis was paid for all the work that he put in, and they more than doubled the production cost of the book compared with if they published it with just text.
Judith
Well, that makes sense, because there’s a lot of illustration. Well, you can’t do it without the illustration…
Anna
…and so obviously, the illustrations were reused between the magazine and the book. I can’t seem to fathom if there was any economy of scale in terms of the typesetting, though, but these investments really added value helping people to see the mechanics of how tricks are performed.
So they were published under the title ‘Modern Magic: A practical treatise on the art of conjuring”, really emphasising practicality there. But I thought that felt quite ahead of its time. The word modern…
Judith
Yes.
Anna
Because the Modernist period of art and literature, which broke away from past traditions, is generally thought to have begun following the death of Queen Victoria in 1901. Yet here’s Routledge using the title a quarter of a century earlier.
Judith
I think I mean, there was a modernity creeping in, though, wasn’t there? In journalism as well.
There was like the new woman creeping in around the end of the century. Is that right?
Anna
She sounds exciting, the new woman.
Judith
The new woman who eschewed marriage and children and who wore masculine clothes and,
Anna
Oh, those kind of new women.
Judith
Women, those women that wrote magazines and might have wanted to do magic as well. But still to have it as a title.
Anna
Well, I did think it was really revolutionary. I thought, well, Routledge are doing something really amazing here. But then I looked at other titles of books, nonfiction books that came out around the same time, and clearly everything was tagged with the word modern.
We could buy books on modern geography, modern history, modern architecture, modern medicine, modern athletics, modern furniture, which I love because it included furniture for your billiard room, and modern men of letters, which included writers like Dickens and Victor Hugo. So it’s clearly the title format everyone’s just using at the time.
Judith
And in the mid… middle of the 19th century.
Anna
Yeah, so it’s like, if we call it modern, it’s really cool.
Judith
It’s that modern with the kind of jazz age…
Anna
Where we haven’t got to yet.
But it is worth pointing out that magic was, in fact, changing a bit at this time. It hadn’t quite become totally modern, but it was in this transitional stage. And in the late 1800s It was moving from a cheap fairground sideshow complete with performers dressed as wizards and mystics to more of a gentleman’s pursuit and the top hat and tails we still associate with magicians today.
Judith
Yes, the drama of the performance and lending it that legitimacy.
Anna
Absolutely, because a book published the same year as Lewis’s talks of conjurers in the not so distant past being viewed as vagrants who weren’t admitted into good society or even regarded as respectable characters. But by 1876 magic is starting to be more accepted as a respectable art that happens in the drawing room or in the parlour, and is something that well-to-do people are frequenting and even getting involved in.
Judith
So, yes, that would probably then why the book is by Professor Hoffman?
Anna
Yes. Because magic is becoming more respectable, it is something that clearly Routledge were keen to publish, and it’s actually probably the perfect time to bring out this comprehensive, extensively research book. But at its heart, the issue is that conjuring still remains an art of deception.
Judith
I don’t know whether I see it as deception.
Anna
But I have just deceived you by showing you that magic trick, and you don’t know how I got those kings to move around the pack. I have tricked you literally…
Judith
Like a suspension of belief in that moment.
Anna
And so that’s why Lewis didn’t want to use his own name on the book, because who would want to work with a barrister who was a master of deception?
So initially, he tells Routledge that he wants to publish anonymously, but Routledge aren’t having any of that, so they ask him to come up with this pen name, and it is Routledge, Edmund Routledge, who says, “while you’re about it be a professor”.
Judith
Ah. He’s very… very, very savvy.
Anna
Exactly. And it’s because respectable magicians were, at the time, known as Professor so-and-so, which separated them from those kind of mystics and wizards.
Lewis adds the surname Hoffman because he felt it gave an air of uncertain nationality, and that the public could then imagine their own author. They might think it’s some distinguished German or American wizard who was giving away the secrets of his craft.
Judith
Did he have any other magicians beating down his door? Being angry that he produced this book when he wasn’t actually one of them. He wasn’t, like, in The Magic Circle.
Anna
Interestingly, The Magic Circle, with its motto, as you say, of keeping secrets, wasn’t founded until 1905, so I think that’s almost the pinnacle of when magic really became respectable. So we’re in this transitional stage now, where there are still some wizards and mystics out there, but then there are also some respectable professors.
I mean, he got backlash because he’s sharing knowledge that he himself writes in his introduction was previously held in the hands of a few, and that those few have jealously guarded that knowledge.
Judith
That’s interesting, because, I mean, it was a century for also trying to share knowledge and make knowledge more widely available to all people. So the idea that magic is the one thing that should be kept from people. So it’s an interesting thing that he did, actually.
Anna
Yes. I mean, I love the fact that at this point in time, there are even magazines called things like the periodical of knowledge diffusion, or…
Judith
Oh yes, because there was a society that I do remember that, the Society for knowledge diffusion.
Anna
So people are embracing this idea that knowledge is something to be shared, and yet this is, as you say, a field and sector where it’s been protected.
And I suppose what’s really interesting to me is, as well as instructions about how to perform tricks, which, of course, the audience knows are deceptions. We call them tricks, after all. He also reveals some of the wider ways in which magicians fool people. For instance, this is what he says about the conjurers’ wand: “apart from the prestige derived from the traditional properties of the wand, it affords a plausible pretext for many necessary movements which would otherwise appear awkward and unnatural”.
So he goes on to explain that if, for instance, you were concealing something in your clenched fist, that holding a wand in that same fist gives you a reason to position your hand in that way so the audience won’t suspect that there’s something hidden, because…
Judith
It’s such a perfect prop, if you think about it like that.
Anna
Yeah. And also, if you need to turn your back on the audience to quickly hide something on your person, you can make it look like you were simply turning around to pick up the wand from a table behind you.
Even deciding when you say abracadabra, as I had done in the trick that I showed you… You may have actually done the thing earlier to make this happen, but you make the audience feel that the magic is happening now. So you…
Judith
In the present. You have to be present. You have to be there to see it and be incredulous.
Anna
Exactly. So I think there’s a lot to do with pacing, a lot to do with when you reveal things, and also the fact that you might deliberately obscure information. For instance, if you’re trying to build up suspense in a story, you might try and distract people with a red herring so they don’t work out what’s going to happen. And that’s the same with magicians trying to divert your attention somewhere else so that they can do their stuff without you picking up on what’s really…
Judith
He’s talking to people about how to perform and how to take an audience with you and have their belief.
Anna
In some sense, I think there’s definitely links between magic or conjuring and storytelling. Conjurers do a lot of what storytellers do. In some sense.
Judith
Yeah. Storytellers as tricksters.
Anna
So I feel like he’s giving away more than just the secrets about actually how to do tricks. And there’s a really intriguing discussion, which I think you’d like Judith, about all the secret pockets and devices that magicians use to hide things on their person. So they have pockets, for instance, by their thighs, so that simply by putting their hands down by their sides, they can quickly and easily drop something into them, if they’re just trying to hide something away.
Judith
D’ya know, I have actually had a bit of a fetish about little tricks and even clothing, because you can get some vintage things on eBay.
Anna
Like magicians clothing? Wow. Another thing you might have if you were going to buy something like that, is you might have an elastic band inside your waistcoat that holds items that you can just sort of shove up under your waistcoat very quickly, until you can remove them during your brief turn away from the audience, perhaps disguised as a move to collect your wand.
Judith
This has gone beyond instructing boys to amuse themselves, hasn’t it? This is actually, this is a big book of magic. This is a big book of how to be a magician.
Anna
And of course, that does mean that professional magicians are up in arms. Some, as we heard earlier, want him dead and his books burned. That comment actually, about burning the books, came from the Dean of the Society of American Magicians. Others fear they’ll now see a plague of magicians who are able to break into the field because all this knowledge has been shared with the masses. There’s a great quote from the time that says, “the golden days of magic are over. The world will be as full of magicians as the Jersey coast is of mosquitoes”.
Judith
So really, there should be just a big warning on this book. Spoiler alert.
Anna
But then, something remarkable, dare I say magical, happens because his work is so good – one reviewer describes it as the bast book on magic in the English language – that instead of killing off those golden days, he inspires professionals magicians and actually sparks a new golden age of magic. And he’s ultimately lauded for his contribution to the field, and he goes on to write three follow up volumes and translates the writing of an acclaimed French illusionist.
And this is why I wanted to do this episode, because, on the one hand, it’s a story about publishing what you care about with, I assume, on Lewis’s part, no other aim than to write on a congenial subject. But then you end up building your reputation in the field in which you were a complete unknown, and even play a major role in shaping its future. And I can’t think of many other books that do that.
Judith
I can’t think of any. I mean, I’m just so used to them being written by experts, even at that time.
Anna
So although people do use nonfiction books quite often nowadays to bolster their reputation, but he’s doing something which isn’t his professional job. He’s not trying to become the expert, and yet, he sort of becomes the expert.
Judith
Just through curiosity. I think that’s a wonderful thing, that he then becomes a bestseller..
Anna
And he has these further books that add even more to that, to the kind of body of knowledge about magic. So he made a difference, partly because the time was right, because we’re in this transitional stage, but it’s also because of that instructional nature of the book, which helped readers do something rather than just learn about something
Judith
And that passion and dedication that he had.
Anna
Absolutely, but I also think it’s because Routledge got the material into so many people’s hands by the magazine, the annual and the book, probably selling some in WH Smith at railways. They also sold some, for instance, in Hamley’s toy shop, presumably next to the magic equipment.
Judith
And I love the idea that he really did encourage a new age. Yeah, if it wasn’t accessible before that, they could kind of aspire to be a great magician.
Anna
I suppose his decision to reveal magical secrets does bring to mind current debates about access to knowledge. So in today’s world, academic research is either locked away behind paywalls or openly shared with the world, and ‘Modern Magic’ feels like an early example of how opening up access can actually advance a field.
Judith
That’s a really interesting way. And I think maybe there were other things at the time that were also perhaps trying to do that. So you mentioned the Society for the Diffusion of Knowledge. I think from what I remember, I know they were really keen to have access to education for everybody. But I know they were giving that away in a way, and I know that publishers were quite upset about that too.
Anna
Well, yes, obviously, quite often it’s the publisher who wants to control the access, not the author. But it really did make a difference, I think. And there’s a magician at the time, Nevil Maskelyne, who, unlike some of the other magicians, said, he was glad Lewis had published, because now that you’ve explained all the old tricks, conjurers will have to invent new ones. And it’s like a facetious comment, but one I think that has some underlying truth, because we can only advance knowledge if we share what we already know, like our baseline of knowledge to start with.
Judith
Yes, so that everyone has to up their game.
Anna
Exactly. And so although he had his detractors, professional magicians did ultimately value the book. And in 1912 magician will Goldston says of Lewis, “he’s been our teacher and our instructor as long as most of us can remember. He stands today for all that is best and truest in magic”.
Seven years later, just before he died, aged 80, so he had a good life, possibly the most famous magician ever, Harry Houdini wrote that “scores of professional magicians owe their first magical inspiration to his masterpiece”. That’s the book ‘Modern Magic’. And Houdini calls Lewis “The brightest star in the firmament of magical literature”.
Judith
That’s a wonderful accolade. I think it’s really interesting, because probably other magicians who are really kind of flamboyant or mesmerising on stage actually probably couldn’t have written in that way, so they couldn’t have made it clear. So I think his particular skill earns him that place.
Anna
Yeah, and for me, his diligent research and his focus on that clarity combined with Routledge’s ambition, makes ‘Modern Magic’ a success. An unexpected byproduct of that was Lewis’s own transformation from this little known barrister into a bright, magical star.
Judith
I love that he went from being vilified to being lauded then, and I hope that he got a place in The Magic Circle Hall of Fame, if there is such a thing.
Anna
He does talk about the Indian basket trick, and it’s another of the sensational feats, he says, identified with the name of Colonel Stodare. He says it’s not a pleasant trick to witness.
Judith
Was Colonel Stodare a sadist?
I don’t know.
End narration and credits
To discover more curious people who write, make, market and read books, follow Bookshapers wherever you get your podcasts. You can follow us on Instagram at bookshaperspodcast, or find additional information and images about this and other stories on our website, bookshapers.co.uk
This episode was recorded by Anna Faherty and Judith Watts and edited and produced by Anna Faherty. Thanks also to Marco Tarantino of University of the Arts London for support with recording.
The incidental music for this episode is The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, composed by Paul Dukas in 1897 and performed by the New York Philharmonic Symphony Orchestra in 1929. You can find it at the Internet Archive. And our theme music combines folk guitar from Dvideoguy, a typewriter sound effect from tams_kp and a print shop effect from ecfike, that’s e c f i k e, all available at freesound.org.
Thanks for listening. Tune in again soon.
