Techniques of Illusion: A Cultural and Media History of Stage Magic in the Late Nineteenth Century

This book explores stage conjuring during its “golden age,” from about 1860 to 1910.

This study provides close readings highlighting four paradigmatic illusions of the time that stand in for different kinds of illusions typical of stage magic in the “golden age” and analyses them within their cultural and media-historical context: “Pepper’s Ghost,” the archetypical mirror illusion; “The Vanishing Lady,” staging a teleportation in a time of a dizzying acceleration of transport; “the levitati...