One of 450 copies on coated paper, the only printing (no. 385).
Signed presentation inscription: “à Maurice Genevoix, Hommage et gratitude, Blois, 24 août 1945.”
Facsimile of Robert-Houdin's calling card, mounted at the head of the volume.
A very rare first edition of the first study devoted to Robert-Houdin. It was written in the midst of the war, in 1943, when its author, Jean Chavigny — a locksmith by trade and a brilliant self-taught intellectual who pursued numerous artistic and literary activities in his native town — became passionately interested in the figure of the greatest French conjurer and illusionist of the nineteenth century. He published it at the Liberation, at his own expense, printed by the Blois-Vienne (the southern part of the town) printer, Imprimerie Lhermitte. Quickly out of print, the book was reissued in 1946 and again in 1969, and is now regarded as a classic. Despite the abundant literature produced since, it remains one of the best biographies of Robert-Houdin and a standard reference on the history of magic.
The self-taught “father of modern magic,” Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin originated almost all of the “great tricks” of present-day magic, drawing on his scientific knowledge to devise them.
From the library of Maurice Genevoix (inscription and bookplate).
Fechner, La Magie de Robert-Houdin, p. 121.