“A great trick, like a great song, should be an inspiration,” Jim Steinmeyer told Esquire in 2012. “It should lead you to other things that are also wonderful. That’s what happens in literature, and it happens in music, and it happens in art. But in magic, they don’t do that. They just take it. You would hope that what you do inspires, but instead

In the early twentieth century, Harry Kellar went to great lengths to obtain the secret of John Nevil Maskelyne’s Levitating Lady trick. Maskelyne was quickly becoming one of the most lauded stage performers in the world, and Kellar, who was still performing stale illusions from years past, saw that his influence was on the decline.

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