In the most magical month of the year, the book of the month turns into the book collector of the month – and he is no regular collector, but the most magical of them all. I am talking about the grand master escapist and illusionist, Harry Houdini (1874-1926). The sensation caused by his escape stunts have generated a century-long admiration, which has produced biographies, essays and articles, but also fictional books, movies and tv shows. And yet, there is one aspect of his life that is still largely neglected – that of his bibliophilia.

Houdini (born Erik Weiss) inherited his love of books from his father, Rabbi Mayer Weiss, who collected mainly religious texts. From a very young age, little Erik combined this passion with what was to become the love of his life: magic. Despite his premature death, he managed to amass an impressive library of about 15,000 books, 50,000 prints and several thousand theatre-related ephemera. His collection was one of the largest in the world dedicated to the occult, with the main themes being magic, witchcraft, demonology, and hypnotism, and a large portion devoted to the history of Spiritualism and theatre. He collected for various reasons. In the beginning, he started to buy books that could teach him new magic tricks, but later on he started collecting works on spiritualism that – according to the manuscript notes he left in them – were generally used to criticise and disprove certain theories or fraudulent practices. He also collected for the simplest of reasons, the same one that moves every collector, from the wealthy magnates to people of significantly lesser means – a profound love of books.

Book hunting was one of Houdini’s favourite pastimes and it occupied a great deal of this time. He claimed that he only worked five months and spent the rest of the year in his library, and went as far as to say that he lived there.1 This haven was formed thanks not only to his fervent activity, but also to some of the most prestigious antiquarian booksellers in the United States and in Europe. In England, Houdini had connections with one of the most important dealers in London, the Maggs brothers. The firm was founded by Uriah Maggs in the middle of the 19th century and between 1894 and 1906 his four sons – the brothers that gave the name to the firm – took over. By the time Houdini started dealing with the Maggs, sometime before 1920, only three of the brothers were still alive and, despite showing great affection and respect for all of them, he became particularly close with Charles Maggs.

I had the privilege of doing an internship at Maggs Bros., and I was shown some of their memorabilia: among them, six letters from the Great Houdini, which give us an insight into his fervent activity as a collector, and into his restless mind. A perfect example is set by the latest one, dated 4 July 1920 and allegedly written “Mid. Ocean” (Figure 3, left): “I read your catalogue 5000 feet mid-air flying to Paris. Too busy to make notes so am sending you a list of what I would like to have sent to me.”2 This letter is a brief but very clear testimony to the central role that collecting played in the magician’s life. The thought of grabbing the books he was interested in obsessed him so much that he flipped through the sales catalogues in every free moment of his day, even if he was flying. The earliest letter sent by Houdini, and preserved in the Maggs archive, is typewritten on a beautifully headed paper3 and it immediately allows us to understand the importance of a bookseller’s archive: the illusionist enquires about a signed photograph that was sold to somebody else but that he very much desired (Figure 5, right). Every book collection is to be seen as a work in progress, for it is very rare that a collector has the time, money and opportunity to buy everything they set their minds to, so knowing what one had intention to buy but could not is equally important and revealing.

The letter also offers a fun testimony to the type of relationship between Houdini, who invited the Maggs to his magic shows, and the brothers, who consistently failed to let him know which show they wished to attend. In a later letter4 this time handwritten and dated four days later, Houdini was still waiting for an answer and urging Charles Maggs to send him word fast, as “crowds crowd to see” his show. In the same letter, Houdini jokingly reprimands Mr Maggs for referring to him, famously egotistical, as “modest”, of all the adjectives! But the magician promises: “Truth will prevail” (Figure 3, right). By January 22nd, Houdini was still asking for which performance at Finsbury Park the Maggs wanted tickets. We don’t know if they attended one at the end, but they definitely were still in their client’s good graces the following month, when he invited them to a private show of The Grim Game, one of only five films featuring Houdini (Figure 2). The movie, which was also Houdini’s second experience as an actor, originally made its debut in New York City on August 25th, 1919, and in that occasion the main star also chose to do a private showing for his most “magical” friends. For the London premiere, the three booksellers had the honour of being counted among them. In the letter that contains the invitation, the illusionist-turned-actor suggestively identifies himself as “the Book Collector who signs himself, sincerely yours, Houdini”5 (Figure 4).

A most interesting letter is one dated 26 February 1920.6 This letter gives us an even different picture of the indefatigable Houdini, this time as an aviator, but above all it suggests a type of relationship with Maggs that went beyond the simple dealer-customer one. Before launching into a self-celebrating account of his aerial exploits, Houdini seems to answer a direct question from Charles Maggs about his first flights in the “dark ages.” He explains in detail how he was one of the only 30 aviators in the world and one of the firsts to put his name on a plane and to have an accident policy. It might sound like just the boast of a vain person, but the Maggs brothers were in the process of preparing a major catalogue (Maggs 387), which they would publish later that same year and which was designed to trace the evolution of the history of aviation.7 It was a descriptive catalogue that contained a total of 1,494 books, some of which extremely rare and accompanied by illustrations, which made the work appreciated even by contemporaries as a valuable reference tool. Furthermore, the catalogue would open up a new area for book collectors, since there weren’t many dedicated to the subject, and it seems that the Maggs had asked Houdini, who had been flying since 1909, for a few more details on the more contemporary history of flight to present it with more accuracy.