Hi folks:
It is a privilege indeed to spread the word that all of Dr. Eddie Dawes 30+ years of articles from his A Rich Cabinet of Magical Curiosities series are now available on one disk in fully text searchable Adobe Acrobat format. As I wrote in Volume 1 of The Historians Guide to Conjuring (Redux) (and with apologies to Eddie if saying it so publicly causes him embarrassment), Dr. Dawes must surely be the doyen of conjuring historians of this era. Im not aware of anybody who has equaled the scholarship, breadth and volume of his contributions to conjuring history, especially in such an engaging and seemingly effortless manner. Readers of Genii and The Magic Circular magazines, where his Rich Cabinet articles are a monthly feature, are well acquainted with the quality of his work in this series.
The disk can be ordered in CD-ROM or DVD format take your pick and contains 322 chapters consisting of more than 1,500 pages of magical curiosities, facts, figures and history. All of the hundreds of original illustrations (many in full color) have been retained and reproduced, and there are some new illustrations as well. In addition, Eddie has supplemented some of the articles with new material, so this anthology is actually more complete than the series as it originally ran in The Magic Circular.
If you are attending The Magic Circles Centenary Celebration later this month, you can order your disk for 40 and pick it up in London at that time. Or you can place an order for 45 and have the disk sent to you on or about August 1, 2005. In any case, you must order in advance as I understand that each disk will be personalized, numbered and signed. Im told that 10 from each sale will be donated to The Magic Circle.
You can order by clicking on either of the website links below. One clarification should be made: even though the websites may only mention the availability of the DVD format, I am told that you have a choice of ordering in either the DVD or the CD-ROM format.
Order at Peter Scarletts website: http://www.peterscarlett.com/html/new_items.html
Order at The Magic Circles website: http://www.themagiccirclecentenary.co.u ... net_0.html
My apologies (especially to good friend Eddie) if the foregoing seems a claim to be the best thing since the invention of the wheel, but I (and no doubt many others) have been looking forward to having an easy and fully searchable way of accessing Eddies Rich Cabinet series, which is, without exaggeration, a very reliable source and rich cabinet of magic history. All the hype aside, even if you have only a slight interest in magic history and keep the number of magic texts in your library to a minimum, this is a resource you should have.
Finally, knowing Eddie, if he had any say in this Im sure hed insist on acknowledging and thanking Mr. Peter Scarlett, and would say that without Peters expertise and hard work, this project would not have become a reality.
Clay Shevlin