Scope and Content Note
John J. and his wife Hanna M. McManus and Morris N. and his wife Chesley V. Young had become acquainted through their shared interests, collecting over 20,000 items in total. Jointly, they gifted their collections to the Library of Congress in 1955. Today this vast collection is known as the McManus-Young Collection.
This finding aid outlines the magic clipping portion of the collection focusing primarily on content from the United States and England. Careers of famous magicians are covered, primarily Harry Houdini, Harry Blackstone, Dante, Howard Thurston, Hardeen, C.A. George Newnann, Nicola, and Elbern Calvert. Topics include conjuring, fraudulent gambling, fraudulent spiritualism, hypnotism, and ventriloquism.
With a date span of 1870 through 1955, the McManus-Young Collection provides a rich survey of the literature of "illusion practices," which includes works on conjuring, ventriloquism, fortune-telling, spiritualism, witchcraft, gambling, hypnotism, automata, and mind reading comprised of a gathering of thousands of pamphlets and offprints. This ephemeral literature is the backbone of modern magic. Through these small publications, tricks are revealed and outlined, techniques are discussed and performances are detailed.
At this time, the finding aid focuses only on the clippings in the collection which are comprised of three series: Magic Clippings by Author, Magic Clippings by Subject and Miscellaneous. The current release of the finding aid completes the listing by author series and includes the first three boxes of the second series. Additional installments towards the completion of the second series will be forthcoming in future releases. There remain several unprocessed components of these series including unindexed oversized materials (clippings, “Tabloid Size,” and “Newspaper Size”) and the Morris Young’s card file (11 card catalog drawers). Future series of this finding aid may expand to include other genres of the McManus-Young Collection.