Description
Todd Karr’s Bibliography of Magic: Conjuring Books from 1584 to Today
A multi-volume set researched and compiled by Todd Karr
Foreword by David Copperfield
Multi-volume set
More than 1750 pages
Over 23,000 historic and modern magic works fully detailed
Large-format 8.5 x 11 size
Hardbound
Regular edition: Four hardbound (casebound) volumes approximately 450 pp. each. Please order directly from Amazon.
Deluxe limited edition (For upcoming June delivery): Three leather-bound volumes approximately 600 pp. each: Limited to 120 signed, numbered copies. Includes recent corrections and additions not in the regular edition (see below for a link to our free PDF with all current updates). Pre-order from The Miracle Factory now for delivery this month.
(Note: The regular and deluxe sets have nearly identical contents. Amazon limits books to only 550 pages, so we designed a four-volume version for their system.)
“The physical and mental endeavour required to produce this four-volume masterpiece is beyond imagining. Todd Karr has conjured up a work of scholarship that will be cherished and consulted as long as the art of magic is performed. His is a monumental achievement that can proudly stand in the line of conjuring chroniclers as diverse as S. W. Clarke, Tarbell, Toole Stott, Whaley, and Dawes.” – John Fisher
“Todd Karr has published the most comprehensive bibliography of books on magic and the allied arts ever – by far. Not just a must for magic-book collectors, these volumes will also be useful to professional practitioners of the art. So make some space on your favorite reference shelf and invest in a set soon.” – Byron Walker
“The first step in any deep-dive study of a magician whose tricks you’re trying to learn from is to know all the books he wrote. From that point, the real research begins. Todd Karr’s Bibliography of Magic makes this an easy task. Finally, I have a comprehensive list of what magic books have been in print. It’s an indispensable resource for anyone who’s researching magic.” – Levent
“Todd Karr’s Bibliography of Magic is the quintessential tool for authoritative magic writing. It’s a researcher’s encyclopedic guide to printed magic material, from the modern to the impossibly rare.” – Charles W. Greene III
With an eloquent foreword by David Copperfield, Todd Karr’s Bibliography of Magic is the most comprehensive bibliography of magic books ever published.
Compiled by award-winning conjuring historian Todd Karr, this amazing multi-volume 1762-page set features details of over 23,000 conjuring works from around the globe from 1584 to 2025.
Each entry lists the book’s author, title, date, publisher, city, binding, color, pages, size, topics, and other bibliographical information.
Whether you’re looking for information on all of Houdini’s written works, investigating a scarce antiquarian pamphlet on sleight-of-hand or a modern book on stage illusion, or conducting in-depth research on card magic or mentalism, you’ll likely find what you’re looking for in these volumes.
This epic study of conjuring literature will hopefully soon become one of your favorite research tools to improve your techniques, find wonderfully unexpected secrets to read about, and explore the vast, subtle, and long-lived art of the magician.
The bibliography traces the lifetime output of every individual author and every magic publisher’s slate of releases, as well as exhaustively recorded variants and later editions to allow you to follow the whole publishing history of many important writings that have never before been fully documented.
The immense array of entries examine every genre of magic book imaginable by both well-known and small-time authors, including cloth-bound tomes, modern casebound volumes, aged pamphlets, stapled lecture notes, paperback books, magazine anthologies, as well as instructions, manuscripts, advertising booklets, magic-set manuals, and pulp publications.
Sourcing card magic or mentalism? You’ll find listings of thousands of books on cards and mental effects.
Looking for a specific author? How about over 350 works by U. F. Grant, over 160 by Karl Fulves, 130 by Phil Goldstein, and 115 by Ed Marlo?
Interested in the deeper sides of professional magic? There are several hundred works on business, theory, and showmanship.
Into stage or close-up? The entries include thousands of books on stage magic, manipulation, illusions, and close-up work.
Are you a magic historian? You’ll find all the magic-related antiquarian listings of the classic Toole-Stott bibliography, over 700 biographies, hundreds of works on magic history and collecting, and entries for countless early magic books.
Seeking secrets from other countries? This bibliography has more than 660 books in French, over 200 Spanish works, and hundreds in other languages.
If you’re a collector, you’ll be thrilled to find over 375 editions of Professor Hoffmann’s works, almost 150 Robert-Houdin books, over 100 editions of Erdnase, 61 John Henry Anderson works, 37 by Henry Dean, 35 editions of Hocus Pocus, and more in-depth examinations of magic’s earliest classics, not to mention almost 300 rare pulp books.
Pre-order the deluxe leather edition now, or order the regular edition from us or Amazon.
Regular edition volumes:
vol. 1: Aalto to Denise
vol. 2: Dennerlein to Hummerston
vol. 3: Humphrey to Pomeroy
vol. 4: Ponsin to Zver
More compliments:
“Just received your four-volume Bibliography of Magic set. What a wonderful set of extremely useful reference (and history) books. Really easy to navigate and nicely produced. And low cost for the size. Gosh, it must have taken years to research it all. Impressive!” – Paul Gordon
