$30.00
Amazing rare find. Book has been well loved but the interior pages are still in really good condition.
A must for card magicians and collectors.
Greater Magic by John Northern Hilliard is widely considered one of the most important and comprehensive cornerstones of 20th-century magic literature. Originally published in 1938 as a massive, single-volume compendium, it was later broken down by Carl Jones into the multi-volume The Greater Magic Library series to make the text more digestible and accessible.
Volume 1 of this library series focuses almost entirely on layperson-shattering card magic, setting the foundational technical and philosophical tone for the rest of the collection. It features an introduction by the legendary Howard Thurston and contains illustrations by Dr. Harlan Tarbell.
Hilliard uses Volume 1 to drive home a few timeless tenets of the craft:
The Principle of Economy: Never use a complex sleight where a simple bit of psychology or a natural movement will suffice.
Misdirection as an Active Force: Misdirection isn't just "looking away"; it is managing the audience's attention and expectations so completely that the secret action happens in plain sight but entirely out of mind.
Variety in Routining: If you perform three card effects in a row, each must rely on a completely different core methodology (e.g., one sleight-based, one psychological, one structural) so the audience cannot backward-engineer the performance.
While modern card magic has iterated significantly on these moves, Volume 1 remains a brilliant look at how the golden-age masters approached card handling with elegance, economy, and theatrical focus.