Selected Special Collections

McManus-Young Collection

Publications and pictorial material relating to magic, magical apparatus

John J. and Hanna M. McManus and Morris N. and Chesley V. Young jointly presented their magic collection to the Library of Congress in 1955. The collectors had become acquainted through their shared interests and had developed the 20,000 item collction. John McManus, New York attorney and president of Rolls-Royce's American affiliate, and his wife also assembled a collection of magic paraphenalia which they donated to the Ringling Museums in Sarasota, Florida. Since the death of John McManus in 1955, Dr. Young, a New York opthalmologic surgeon, and his wife have added material to the Library's collection.

The McManus-Young Collection provides a rich survey of the literature of what Dr. Young terms "illusion practices," the magician's manipulation of the imagination of others, and includes works on conjuring, ventriloquism, fortune-telling, spiritualism, witchcraft, gambling, hypnotism, automata, and mind reading. Rare volumes and pamphlets from the collection are kept as a unit in the Rare Book and Special Collections Division. While strongest in nineteenth- and twentieth-century publications, the collection embraces significant older works such as Reginald Scot's The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London: 1584), Thomas Ady's A Candle in the Dark (London: 1656), and many editions of Harry Dean's Hocus Pocus. Also included is an extensive file of explanations of magic tricks, the scrapbooks of mentalist C. A. George Newmann, and the famous card-rise box designed by Austrian magician Dr. Johann N Hofzinser. Leonard D. Beck's article, "Things Magical in the Collections of the Rare Book Division" in the Library of Congress Quarterly Journal, v. 31, October 1974, p. 208-234, describes many McManus-Young items. Most volumes are represented in the author/title and shelflist card files for the collection.

Among the pictorial materials from the collection maintained by the Prints and Photographs Division are dust jackets from magic books, portraits of magicians, carnival photographs, Houdiniana, and miscellaneous printed ephemera. Aside from the theater advertisements which are kept with the posters, the McManus-Young items are described in the division catalog.

Digitized Material From the McManus-Young Collection

McManus Young Posters