Harry Price Library of Magical Literature

Rare books in the collection

A substantial minority of items in the Harry Price Library are rare, either because of their age or because of their ephemeral nature. Price acquired many books published in or before 1850. They range from the academic to the popular, from Institoris and Sprenger's Malleus maleficarum (five editions, 1494-1615), to a French board book of children's verses, Livre d'images parlantes (Paris, [18--]), which consists partly of a box with pulleys, the pulling of which produces animal sounds.

Many of the more ephemeral titles were published privately, typically with each copy numbered, and signed by the author. Others are short run special editions, or are of value for copy-specific reasons (e.g. copy no. 8 of the deluxe edition of Will Goldston's Great magicians' tricks ([1931]), inscribed to Harry Price by Will Goldston).

The subject matter ranges from witchcraft, conjuring (from legerdemain to scientific recreations), prophecies (most notably of Nostradamus and of Joanna Southcott), abnormal phenomena, scientific phenomena (e.g. animal magnetism; eighteenth-century work on automata) and mediums to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century almanacs, chapbooks, and a few Gothic novels. Books are English, French, German, more rarely Latin, Spanish or Italian, and occasionally even in Asian languages.

Harry Price made a point of collecting varying editions of specific texts: for example, sixteen editions of Henry Dean's slim conjuring manual Whole art of legerdemain, or, Hocus pocus in perfection (1727-ca. 1850); six editions of Minguet é Irol's conjuring manual Engaños a ojos vistas y diversion de trabajos mundanos fundada en lícitos juegos de manos (not before 1733, 1755-1820); and fifteen editions of Nostradamus's Prophecies (1566-1850). The extraordinarily wide range of his interests, which can be seen particularly in the pamphlet collection, is the comprehensive coverage of debate concerning such issues as animal magnetism; demoniacs in the New Testament (Harry Price owned Andrew Sykes's Enquiry into the meaning of demoniacks in the New Testament, with Sykes's sequels and the responses of others to his views (6 items, 1737)); the examination and interpretation of miracles and freaks, such as George Lukins, the Yatton demoniac (2 items) and Ann Moore, known as the Fasting Woman of Tutbury (4 items, 1810-1813). An especially significant book is the first edition of Scot's Discoverie of witchcraft (London, 1584), which urged against belief in witchcraft and became an exhaustive encyclopædia of contemporary beliefs about witchcraft, spirits, alchemy, magic, and legerdemain. One of the oldest rare individual items is The most excellent, profitable, and pleasant booke of the famous doctour and expert astrologian Arcandam or Aleandrin ... (London, 1564). No other copies are recorded on the ESTC (English Short-Title Catalogue). Johannes de Turrecremata's De aqua benedicta (Rome: Johann Besicken, [ca. 1500]), is apparently the only copy in Great Britain.

Books with noteworthy provenance include G.W. Septimus Piesse's Chymical, natural, and physical magic (London, 1858), previously owned by the prolific magic writer Will Goldston; three books from the conjuror Harry Houdini's library; George Cruikshank bibliographer Albert M. Cohn's copy of Catholic Miracles, illustrated by Cruikshank (London, 1825); and a copy of the second edition of J.P.F. Deleuze's Histoire critique du magnétisme animal (Paris, 1819), inscribed by the author.

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