Ian Keable. Charles Dickens Magician: Conjuring in Life, Letters and Literature. Iankeable.co.uk, 2014. Pp. xviii+268.

Abstract

As Ian Keable may not be entirely familiar to literary scholars, some introduction may be necessary. Keable is a professional magician, Member of the Inner Magic Circle, and winner of the Magic Circle Comedy Award. He has published several books and been a presenter on BBC Radio 4 and is an accredited lecturer for the British Arts Society, specializing in Dickensian conjuring and eighteenth-century hoaxes. He writes a meticulous regular and informative monthly blog.As to why a review of his book should appear in a journal of this nature, the title should provide something more than a hint. To this can be added Keable's participation in the conference held in Pécs celebrating the 200th anniversary of Charles Dickens's birth, at which he not only presented a paper providing a unique perspective into the author's association with magic tricks (which Dickens performed primarily for his children), but in the evening gave his own public performance of those tricks. Dickens paid close attention to the professional conjurors of his day, visiting their performances and including them among the characters in his novels and the other publications that he edited. Keable's attention to detail in his book is at least as close.Conjuring blossomed as an entertainment form in the early nineteenth century, prior to which it had been of low quality, and the magician himself viewed as "not much higher than that of the vagrant." The performance of magic came more or less into its own at the same time as Dickens was embarking upon his career-at one time, he had seriously considered becoming an actor, visiting theatres regularly from 1827. It was in this decade that "a new style of magic performing emerged that attracted theatre-goers," rather than trying to gain street-goers' attention. "These were conjurors who performed predominantly with apparatus, exhibiting on stage a dazzling display of paraphernalia to intrigue their audience." Later, in 1842, Dickens would witness the show of a conjuror and be inspired to take up conjuring himself (3).Charles Dickens Magician is quite original in its layout. The 236 pages are divided into six chapters, preceded by an Introduction, a "Cast of Characters," and a timeline of Dickens's Life and Conjuring. The chapters are divided into the "chapter proper," each with an informative title (The Observer, The Conjuror, The Showman, The Fan, The Man and The Writer), but these are followed by a hefty "supplement" strangely reminiscent of an Arden Shakespeare, for in pages these far outweigh the chapters themselves. The chapters, then, can be seen as the bare bones of the considerable research involved, while the informatively subtitled supplements are the meat. As the FOCUS: Papers in English Literary and Cultural Studies X