Conjuring; or, magic made easy.

Containing an extensive collection of conjuring and legerdemain; sleights with cards, ribbons, rings, fruit, coin, balls, handkerchiefs, etc., all of which may be performed in the parlor or drawing room. New York Popular Publishing Company, n.d. [c 1878]. [Cover title :  De La Mano’s great magic book].  Octavo, pictorial wrappers, 30 pp + 2 pp advertisements, illustrated. An instructional booklet explaining how to perform some of De La Mano’s tricks. A fine copy.

The nineteenth century Austrian-born magician and spiritualist De La Mano, toured the east coast of the United States in 1876, 1878 and 1881. As early as 1878 he was incorporating spiritualist elements into his shows, and his 1881 tour as an illusionist was ultimately abandoned in favour of work as a psychic investigator. While engaged in the study of psychic phenomena at a haunted house in New York in 1882, he mysteriously vanished without trace.