The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin

It is common knowledge that one of the world's greatest magicians gave himself the stage name of Houdini. He was born as Erik Weisz in Budapest in 1874. He emigrated to the United States of America with his mother and four brothers in 1878. The family changed the spelling of their surname to the German ''Weiss'' and, in turn, Erik became ''Ehrich''. In turn that was shortened to ''Ehrie'' and anglicized to ''Harry''.According to his boyhood friend, Joseph F Rinn, in his book Sixty Years of Psychical Research, Weiss started his magic career some time in 1889. A couple of years later, in early 1891, he read The Memories of Robert-Houdin, the well known French magician. In part tribute to Robert-Houdin, and because he apparently believed that adding an ''i'' on the end of a name meant ''like'' in French, Harry Weiss decided to rename himself Harry Houdini and become a professional magician. The rest, as they say, is history.Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. Houdini later found out that a number of the effects that Robert-Houdin claimed to have invented were not invented by him at all. This was obviously a crushing blow to Houdini who was now so well known under his chosen stage name that he could not change it. In a personal crusade he researched and wrote his book The Unmasking of Robert-Houdin which he finished on 20th July 1907 and which appeared in print the following year. Bizarrely, the printing in England claims copyright in 1906, 1907 and 1908.The book was dedicated to his father and contains many reproductions of photographs, playbills and illustrations from his own collection. He was very proud of his achievement and, in fairness, it must be said that in the days in which it was written the research and effort that went into its production must have been considerable. Indeed, he offered a prize of $250 if anybody could name ''a book which has taken so much time, energy, travel and money, with such authentic data regarding real magical inventions.''Despite all the work he had put in even he thought it likely that few people would read the work in its entirety. Indeed, in many copies there is his own handwritten note beseeching the reader to ''Please read the introduction at least''.Perhaps he thought that those who did so might skate over the rather vicious attacks contained in the rest of the text. It was not to be and the book was roundly castigated by the world of magic, especially in France, the home of Robert-Houdin. It has been suggested that Houdini wrote the book because he was shunned by the family of Robert-Houdin when he made his first tour of Europe.The truth will never be known but it is telling that Houdini later said ''The only mistake I made was in calling my book Houdin Unmasked. It ought to have been the History of Magic.'' There is an element of truth in that statement as the book does contain a great deal of historical research into the illusions and effects of magic.As with other offerings in The Golden Age of Magic series this volume is not a straightforward reproduction of the original text. There are a number of reasons for this. The main one, as with almost all early books, is that the typefaces used frequently make reading a chore rather than a pleasure. There is also the fact that the original printings were poorly edited, resulting in spelling errors and sometimes mistakes which completely alter the meaning of the text. Wherever possible we have endeavoured to reproduce illustrations from the original to the highest possible standard and, in many cases, have been able to improve them. However, you should be aware that some illustrations in the original book were, themselves, copied from documents that were then many years old and some reproductions may not be to present day standards.We have taken the liberty of producing the book to make it both accurate and accessible. We would hope that, were the author alive