Hey Jonathan, wasn't trying to help put a value on your book. I was responding to Bill's post to do a search of Amazon and was just offering another link to the material in question. Sorry for the confussion. As an aside I own Modern Magic and More Magic, both American versions as well as Later Magic 1904 and Latest Magic. These are great resources to be sure. Good luck with your sale.

John

OK, John. Understood and much appreciated.

Hope to see you at a show or Magic get-together one day.

Best regards to you and your wife.

Jonathan

Jonathan, I'm replying on the board instead of by PM because there are some general points to make which will hopefully be useful to someone else down the road.

Hate to sound negative, but to the experienced collector, your copy is not a collector's copy, it's a reading copy. From your description, it's not in great condition and it lacks the dusk jacket, both of which are death for a serious collector. The other thing is that relying on internet book prices as a good indicator of market value is very risky. Most dealers on the internet are general book dealers, and they haven't a clue about the market value of magic books. They tend to price magic books on the high side because they think they're rare, when in reality the secretive nature of magic means that most magic books are circulated amongst magicians and sold by specialized magic booksellers. That $75 book on Biblio might have been in the dealer's stock for years, in which case the fact that it hasn't sold provides a clue about whether or not it's overpriced.

By the way, the reason for the 1911 copyright is because the 1911 edition added two new chapters in the book, one of which was a biographical piece on Hartz. The 1911 edition is the same as your edition, except for the intro by Mulholland, which is of negligible consequence and importance. So really, collectors would only buy the 1951 edition as a last resort, because they'd far prefer to have the 1911 edition, when that additional material was first published.

Based on your description of the book, if I were selling it, I'd probably ask $25. A few years ago, I sold a slightly better copy in fair dustjacket for $32. But that's just one man's opinion, and sure as I sit here writing this, you could sell the book tomorrow for $50, or put it on eBay and get $200. As veteran eBayers will attest, sometimes there's no logic to auction prices. Over the years, I've seen the same items sell for vastly different prices only a few days or weeks apart.

Thanks for putting the value of my book into further perspective Clay.

I will remove the FS post I currently have and re-list it at $25, as I do not want to mislead anyone. Hopefully the info in this particular posting will help others trying to assess the value of their book (which is/was probably worth a thread in itself.

Best regards.

Jonathan

The main reason I suggested a search on Amazon is that there have been at least two fairly recent reprintings of the book.

OK. Thanks Bill.

Jonathan

Hi everyone, I realise this post is a little old now but I'm hoping someone can assist me in establishing the date of my copy of Later Magic.
Red cloth with gilt printing on the front. The book bears no date (obviously) and the publishers are listed as
London
George Routledge & Sons, Limited
Broadway House, Ludgate Hill
New York : EP Dutton & Company
The preface is written by Louis Hoffmann.
The second last page of the book (554) also has the names Richard Clay & Sons Limited, Monday and Bungay. There are then some advertisements on the last page for other books by Hoffman. The prices are listed in the format of 5/-

Thanks
Simon
Simon

Later Magic was first published in 1903 and an expanded edition was published in 1911. Read Professor Hoffman's preface to determine if he mentions your book is an expanded edition. If so, you will know that at least it was published in 1911 or later.

Thanks Leo,
It's not the expanded version. It seems the expanded version contained another 200 or so pages about Hartz. I think I'm safe in assuming it predates the 1911 edition.