The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley Volumes 1 & 2
The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley Volumes 1 & 2
Alex Elmsley’s name is permanently woven into the fabric of card magic.
Most magicians know his name from the Elmsley Count, but that sleight barely scratches the surface of all the remarkable things he created. Over the course of his life, he published over 200 unique pieces of cutting-edge magic, spread across different publications and decades.
The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley brings his best work together in two monumental books.
Compiled by legendary magic author Stephen Minch, these books represent years of careful research, tracking down Elmsley’s contributions from magazines, manuscripts, lecture notes, and other publications. The result is nearly 1,000 pages devoted to one of the most inventive and analytical minds magic has ever known.
After being unavailable for years, both volumes of The Collected Works are back and more beautiful than ever.
This newly produced edition preserves the original material while making it clearer and easier to study. Older photographs have been enhanced, text has been restored, and the entire set has been refreshed.
Inside these books, you’ll find sleights, routines, theory, mathematical principles, and detailed explorations of subjects like the faro shuffle. Some ideas are practical performance pieces. Others invite you to think more deeply about construction, technique, and what’s possible with a deck of cards.
Whether you are discovering Alex Elmsley’s work for the first time or finally adding these legendary volumes to your library, The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley belongs on the shelf of every serious student of magic.
Also available individually:
The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley Volume 1
Price: £45.00£45.00Volume One contains more than 110 original Elmsley tricks and sleights, along with his groundbreaking essay on presentation, psychology, and misdirection. It is a remarkable look at how Elmsley constructed magic, solved problems, and developed ideas that continue to influence card magicians today.
Inside, you will discover powerful routines like:
“Flight to Witch Mountain” - Four Queens are moved from the deck and dealt face-down into a row. Three more cards are placed onto each Queen. Then, one by one, three Queens mysteriously leave their piles to join the fourth
“Twister’s Flush” - A royal flush is taken from the deck, displayed and turned face-down. The performer makes a magical gesture, twisting the packet end for end, and shows that this has caused the ten to turn face up in the center.
“The Thumb Palm Addition” - A clever technique Elmsley developed for secretly adding cards to the top of the deck that Elmsley experimented with in the late 1950s.
And that is just the start of what you can find in this volume!
424-page, 10.3" x 7.3" Hardback Book
The Collected Works of Alex Elmsley Volume 2
Price: £48.75£48.75Volume Two contains more than 103 original Elmsley tricks, along with five original flourishes, innovative sleights and principles, an entire chapter devoted to faro-shuffle magic, and a detailed exploration of his celebrated “Cardworks” act.
You’ll also find hard-hitting routines like:
“Between Your Palms” - Minch considers this to be Elmsley's second greatest contribution to card magic (after the Elmsley Count). A card is placed between a participant's hands without them seeing what it is. Three other participants each select a card, and one is signed. The cards are lost, and the first two reappear in impossible places before also being put in the hands of the first participant. Then the participant is asked to open their hands. The signed card is revealed to have been the one placed in their hands at the start of the trick.
“Point of Departure” - A card is chosen and sandwiched between the two black Aces. All three cards are given to the participant who made the selection. Despite his certain possession of the cards, his selection vanishes from between the Aces and is produced from the performer's pocket.
“Face Your Brothers” - Three cards are removed from the pack by three different participants. Each person is asked to use their intuition as the magician replaces his card face-up at a position of his own choosing in the deck. Each then removes their card from the pack and the card that faces it. When these adjacent cards are turned up, each is seen to be the exact mate to the selection beneath it.
512-page, 10.3" x 7.3" Hardback book
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