Neo-Magic ArtistryPreface
Todd Karr
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Samuel Henry Sharpe believed in magic. In Sam’s eyes, the art of the conjurer could be not only a beautiful, inspiring artform but also a spiritual experience connected to the very roots of man’s existence. For S. H. Sharpe, magic was a primal force meant to be understood, felt, and revered.
In sharing his visions, Sharpe created some of the only writings on magic that — despite their weaknesses, which Sam perceived — stand on their merits as literature. The unique experience of journeying through Sharpe’s works, like his classic Neo-Magic, guides the reader along an enchanted path of words that winds through science and spirit, past visions of high art and analytical thought, pausing often to visit the ancient sages of Literature, Art, Drama, Poetry, and Logic.
Robert Lund — himself a brilliant writer — once wrote an admirative article about Sharpe entitled “The Aristotle of Magic.” But, ironically, few have had the opportunity to hear Sharpe’s wisdom. For most of Sam’s life, magic publishers resisted his writings, fearing the typically meager sales of books on magic theory.
In the 1920s, in the countryside near the east coast of England, a gentlemanly writer known as S. H. Sharpe, born August 31, 1902, had many basic questions about the art of magic. Why did magic acts seem so trivial? Why wasn’t magic considered a fine art? How could magic become more magical? The conjuring books he had read did not provide the answers he sought, so he started to compose his own thoughts on paper.
Unlike his predecessors, Robert-Houdin and Maskelyne and Devant, Sharpe did not direct a magic theater. Of unpredictable health, he lived in the fresh air of a small, peaceful town, where he ran an apiary and poultry farm.
In spare moments, Sharpe wrote his thoughts on the backs of receipts or any other nearby scrap paper. He also taught himself German and translated Ottokar Fischer’s J. N. Hofzinser Kartenkuenste.
The influential Hofzinser volume, published as J. N. Hofzinser’s Card Conjuring by The Magic Wand editor George Johnson in 1931, set the scene for Sam’s scraps of paper to emerge in book form in 1932.
The resulting work, Neo-Magic, remains one of the most profound magic books ever published. Written in exquisite but friendly Edwardian prose, Neo-Magic is a breathtakingly expansive and insightful nuts-and-bolts analysis of how magicians create magic and how they may perform more magically. The book follows in the footsteps of Our Magic but ventures even further down the road.
Along the way, Sharpe conjures up for the reader his devotedly ideal vision of magic as both fine art and spiritual path, accompanied by quotes from thinkers ranging from Shakespeare, Plato, and George Bernard Shaw to Robert-Houdin and Chung Ling Soo. As the book proceeds, Sharpe subtly emphasizes the symbolic and sacred implications of magic, an unconventional concept for conjuring books of that era.
But the publishing history of Neo-Magic tells a humble story. To have the volume released by George Johnson, Sam had to pay for the printing, as he did with the other Sharpe books Johnson published. He eventually broke even but saw virtually no profit. The book’s elegant first edition of 500 was well received but sold only moderately. The leftover copies apparently perished in a World War II bombing of London.
Johnson produced a second edition of 750 copies of Neo-Magic in 1946. Sam had to loan his only copy of the first edition to the printer, as Johnson had none left.
But the second printing was issued during the post-war era, when materials were scarce, obliging the bindery to use various mismatched colors of cloth for the cover. The reprint also emerged during a printers strike, generating enough typographical errors in the book to warrant inserting a list of corrections in each copy.
The Magic Artistry series of 1935-38 (Conjured Up, Good Conjuring, and Great Magic) continued Neo-Magic’s analysis of magic, and included 32 effects, many of them visions based on Sam’s ideal of magic as fine art. These works, too, soon dwindled out of print.Publishers generally considered such theory books to be too much of a risk. As Sam plainly stated the situation in a 1987 letter to Martin Breese, “Rousing any interest in any books on magic which do not contain tricks is a problem.” Sam often recounted with a laugh and a sigh how Johnson had told him that Neo-Magic would have sold better had it been titled something like Tricks for Twiddlers.
The Sharpe books of the 1930s have remained scarce since their initial printings, present mainly on collectors’ shelves and occasionally on used-book lists, but often in the hearts of those who had read and loved them.
Sharpe’s other works tell the same tale. Published versions of his in-depth studies of Robert-Houdin and David Devant were stalled until Sam finally gave the works to The Linking Ring. Announced in Neo-Magic in 1932, his massive Secret Science series on the technology of magic did not find a publisher until the 1980s, rendering some of the material out of date. He received a small sum for a paperback version of his Hofzinser translation. Publishers rejected or ignored his manuscripts; the books that were accepted suffered long delays.
Despite its rarity, Neo-Magic managed to retain its high reputation as the decades passed. Outside of The Magic Play in 1976, Sharpe’s published works consisted mainly of his many astute magazine pieces.Then, in the 1980s, the magic world unexpectedly heard the first whispers of a revival of S. H. Sharpe’s work.
In the 50 years since Neo-Magic’s first release, the tide of the magic world had changed. Doug Henning had brought magic to millions through his Broadway shows, live tours, and TV specials. Doug spoke of magic as an art, and many of the performers in his wake went through the doors he had opened and began showing the public more developed forms of magic beyond the usual formula of laughter, Zig-Zags, and card tricks. The magic world had begun to look more deeply at the meaning of its art.
In this atmosphere, I published Sam’s mystical Words on Wonder in 1984. Back in the 1930s, when Neo-Magic appeared, Sam was only 30 and highly amused that so many readers took him for an elderly sage. But that’s what he had become by the time I met him.
As a journalism student in Los Angeles, I had written to Sharpe asking whether he’d consider allowing me to publish any of his unreleased works. I was 18. Sam was 82. He warned me in his reply, “I doubt whether you would make any profit out of such an undertaking. My books do not appeal to a large enough market.”
I loved the sample he sent of Words on Wonder and soon released the book in a limited run. Sam was right. I didn’t make a profit. I broke even, though, and the unique work, with an introduction by Doug Henning, has struck a special chord with many of its readers. Doug and his wife Debby once told me that they would frequently read it to each other for inspiration.
Many other supporters promoted Sam’s work during this remarkable period. Several publishers, including Micky Hades and Mike Caveney, brought his writings to new readers. In his 80s, Sam saw an award-winning serialization of his study The Magus Ritual; new versions of Salutations to Robert-Houdin and Devant’s Delightful Delusions; the release of his four-volume Conjurers’ Secrets set; and a reprint of his 1937 book Ponsin on Conjuring.
The Magic Castle awarded him a Literary Fellowship and Genii published an S. H. Sharpe issue. Friends like Edwin Dawes, Martin Breese, Eric Lewis, John Gaughan, Richard Hatch, and Charles Reynolds participated with Sam on various projects.
The new books brought in a small amount of money, but Sam was more fulfilled, I think, to see that magicians were turning his ideals into reality. The neo-magic artists he wrote of — the new, artistic magicians — had appeared, bringing higher magic to the world and finding professional success doing so. Many top magicians contacted Sam to remind him that his words had made an impact.
Doug Henning even ordered copies of Words on Wonder to distribute at a seminar on wonder for Disney’s creative staff, during which he quoted some of Sam’s thoughts from the book. I reported this to Sam, but I wish he’d been there, seeing the core of the most far-reaching wonder-makers in the world being told by the world’s top magician that a wise sage named Sam Sharpe had said things like “Wonder is the key to the cosmos, and magic fabricates that key.
Doug told me enthusiastically that Words on Wonder “is going to change Disney!” An exaggeration, yet I still find it meaningful that a seed of Sam’s words was planted in the minds of these creators.While studying in Paris in 1987, I went to England during Easter vacation and took a tiny, three-car train into Bridlington, the seaside town where Sam lived. Sam was tall, bright-eyed, gentlemanly, and eloquent in conversation. His book-filled house and multicolored garden felt magical, the home of a conjuring scribe.
We spent a wondrous day talking about his work and examining treasures like music boxes he’d restored (Sam came from a long line of watchmakers) and some of Hofzinser’s original gimmicked cards. Sam even treated me to a rare performance, showing me his personal linking-ring routine. Before I left, he signed my copy of Neo-Magic with the same ancient fountain pen he’d used 50 years earlier when writing the book on those scraps of paper.
On my second visit in 1990, I asked Sam some deeper questions about the relationships between magic, art, and life. We spoke of the Bhagavad Gita, Christianity, Theosophy, and Gandhi. Sam drew a few sketches for me that day. One depicted an open book, a crossed pen and wand, and a face with a finger on its lips, representing the wise man’s traditional quest: “To know, to will, to dare, and to be silent.”
Until his death on July 27, 1992, Sam kept revising his works and writing new ones. He remained down-to-earth about his words, feeling that much of what he had written could be improved.
“I sometimes dream of Neo-Magic, Conjured Up, Good Conjuring, and Great Magic being published in one volume for easy reference,” Sam once wrote to me. He planned this combined edition, Neo-Magic Artistry, with Martin Breese but did not live to see it completed.
Neo-Magic Artistry contains Sam’s revised versions of the texts of Neo-Magic and the three Magic Artistry books. Wilfred Huggins created the charming illustrations of the original editions.
— From Todd Karr's preface to Neo-Magic Artistry