Memoirs of Magic Queen: Restoring Adelaide Herrmann’s Lost Legacy

Magician, historian, and author Margaret B. Steele introduces her new book, Queen of Magic: The Wondrous, Unstoppable Adelaide Herrmann.

This program will be offered both in person and virtually.

In her day, Madame Adelaide Herrmann was more famous than her younger colleague, Harry Houdini. For nearly sixty years, Adelaide Herrmann (1853-1932) ruled the global stage. She caught speeding bullets with her bare hands. She soared through the air as a human cannonball. Alongside her husband, Alexander, she executed the most mesmerizing illusions of the Golden Age of Magic. Then tragedy struck. Widowed at forty-three, Adelaide stepped into the magician’s role as the sole headliner. For three thrilling decades, she reigned supreme as vaudeville’s Queen of Magic.

Determined to preserve the Herrmann legacy, Adelaide Herrmann had nearly finished writing a highly anticipated memoir when she died suddenly at age seventy-eight, and her manuscript disappeared. The Queen of Magic remained forgotten for nearly eight decades until her lost memoir finally surfaced in 2010. Its initial publication in 2012 sparked a nascent Adelaide Herrmann revival, inspiring new academic, theatrical, and cinematic works.

Join Margaret B. Steele in commemorating her twenty-five years of Herrmann research and collecting with the release of her newly annotated and expanded edition of Madame Herrmann’s memoir. The new volume features interwoven news and magazine articles, personal letters, interviews, and more than 100 rare images, including photos and posters contributed by the Billy Rose Theatre Division.

The multi-media presentation will include an illustrated talk, magic performances, and a display of rarely seen Herrmann memorabilia, followed by a book signing. Copies of Queen of Magic: The Wondrous, Unstoppable Adelaide Herrmann will be available for purchase at the event.

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Billy Rose Theatre Division