Andrew Gulli is publishing a never-before-seen Harry Houdini article in Strand magazine on the 100th anniversary of his death. An Interesting Scrapbook appears in print for the first time in the United States on Saturday, giving readers a primary source that had stayed buried in the archives.
Andrew Gulli and Strand magazine
Gulli said finding a published version of An Interesting Scrapbook was as elusive as Houdini himself. He also said the article reveals a side of Houdini that has largely been overshadowed by his extraordinary fame as an escape artist, and that it shows him as a historian documenting forgotten magicians, theatrical performers, old playbills, and the world of 19th-century entertainment.
The piece fits Strand magazine’s long-running interest in lost or hidden works by prominent writers and historical figures. Here, the value is not nostalgia; it is access. Researchers and readers get a work by a performer whose name was built on control, secrecy, and self-mythmaking, yet who also wrote more than two dozen books, short stories and plays.
Harry Ransom Center archive
The article was preserved among many of Houdini’s papers in the Houdini Library at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin. That makes the publication less a rediscovery than a transfer from archive to public view, and it turns a hidden manuscript into a usable source for anyone studying how Houdini wrote about the stage world around him.
The content itself is specific. It looks closely at performers who shaped the early days of magic as a stage production, with images of numerous theater bills from an era when public fascination with the supernatural mixed with an appetite for unusual or fanciful acts. Houdini wrote about advertised performances including necromantic miracles, magical delusions, and the greatest living wizard.
Budapest and New York
Houdini, born Eric Weisz in Budapest in 1874, died in 1926 at the age of 52. He was known not only for performance but also for turning against spiritualism when it was presented as anything other than entertainment, and he spent increasing time in his later years exposing performers he called charlatans.
That history gives this publication a sharper edge. Houdini was a prolific author and a fiercely protective one, so the fact that this article appears to have remained unpublished until now makes the material feel less like a recovered curiosity and more like a missing chapter from his public record.
Houdini experts at the University of Michigan and the online fan site Wild About Harry told Gulli they believed it had never previously been in the public domain. He said the unanswered question is whether Houdini withheld it to keep rival magicians from benefiting from his research, or whether he simply never finished the project.
Several commemorations are planned globally on Saturday to mark the anniversary, including a gala and public events in Budapest and a séance at Houdini’s former home in New York. For readers, the immediate takeaway is simple: a long-hidden Houdini text is now moving from archive to print, and the story around it is still open enough to invite more scrutiny.
