A Lost Manuscript Finally Reaches Print
Harry Houdini, the escape artist and illusionist whose fame spread across Europe and America, has new work in print a century after his death. Strand magazine, a literary publication known for bringing lost or hidden writing by notable authors and historical figures to readers, is running an article of his titled An Interesting Scrapbook. The piece had never been published and appears in the US on Saturday, the 100th anniversary of his death.[S1][S2][S3]
Houdini, born Eric Weisz in Hungary in 1874 and brought to the United States as a child, died in 1926 at 52 from peritonitis. Beyond his stage career and his campaign against fraudulent mediums and spiritualists, he wrote prolifically, producing more than two dozen books, short stories and plays. The newly printed article was preserved with many of his other papers in the Houdini Library at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, where a curated tour marks the anniversary on Saturday.[S1]
Portraits of the Magicians Who Came Before
The article offers a close examination of performers who helped establish magic as a staged production and whose example shaped Houdini's own path. It reproduces images of numerous theater bills from a period when audiences were increasingly drawn to the supernatural and to unusual or fanciful acts. Among the advertised performances Houdini discusses are necromantic miracles, magical delusions and a billing for the greatest living wizard.[S1]
Why the Essay Stayed Hidden
Andrew Gulli, Strand's editor-in-chief, described the piece as revealing a side of Houdini that his fame as an escape artist has largely overshadowed, showing him as a historian carefully recording forgotten magicians, stage performers and old playbills. He also noted the poignancy of the world's best-known magician giving such attention to entertainers whose names have mostly vanished from history.[S1]
Experts at the University of Michigan and the fan site Wild About Harry told Gulli they believed the article had never before been in the public domain. Gulli said locating a published version proved as elusive as the man himself, and he raised possible explanations: Houdini may have held the material back for fear that rival magicians would profit from his research, or the project may simply have been left unfinished.[S1]
Commemorations on Both Sides of the Atlantic
Houdini spent growing amounts of time in his final years debunking performers he called charlatans for claiming mind-reading abilities or supernatural powers, and he objected to spiritualism being presented as anything other than entertainment. Commemorations are planned around the world on Saturday, including a gala and public events in Budapest, his birthplace, and a séance at his former home in New York.[S1]
