Houdini, Harry (Erik Weisz) | Presentation copy, inscribed to a fellow performer

Houdini, Harry (Erik Weisz)

The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin. New York: The Publishers Printing Co., 1908

8vo (205 x 142 mm). Frontispiece portrait of Houdini, a multitude of text illustrations; without the subsequently issued index and illustration list. Publisher's pictorial brown cloth; extremities lightly worn.

First edition; presentation copy, inscribed and signed on the front free endpaper: "To Mrs. L. A. Anderson with compliments of the author Harry Houdini April 14—1908." Leona Anderson was the daughter-in-law of the pioneering Scottish magician John Henry Anderson; she is illustrated on page 236 of Unmasking "as she appeared with [Anderson] in the suspension trick about 1868." Loosely inserted in the volume is a carte-de-visite–size albumen photograph of Leona Anderson in a stage costume.

Although Houdini acknowledged "the moulding, dominating influence which the spirit and writings of Robert-Houdin have exerted over my professional career," the thesis of The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin is that "he was not a master-magician, but a clever purloiner and adapter of the tricks invented and used by his predecessors and contemporaries" (pp. 7, 264).