The Fred Braue Notebooks - Volumes #1-8 Set

The legendary and extremely rare Fred Braue Notebooks, in mint condition! The series was first planned to run to 15 volumes in total, but Jeff Busby only published 8 of them.

The 8-Volume set also comes with a FREE 235-page PDF download of The Unpublished Fred Braue Notebooks!

Several years ago, Conjuring Arts acquired what remained of the Jeff Busby collection, which held the source material for the famous Fred Braue notebooks. At the request of Conjuring Arts, Mr. Leo Reed reviewed that material and assembled the unpublished content. This volume is intended to supply the material Busby had planned, as well as material beyond what he had started to prepare.

Among the material received were 2 old 5.25" floppy discs holding the Busby drafts of volumes 9 and 10. Mr. Reed located the items Busby had planned for those volumes and included them here as scans of the original notes.

You will also find other notes and materials that Conjuring Arts believes Mr. Busby meant to use in later volumes. All of it is included here.

Conjuring Arts made every effort over the last 2 years to determine who holds the rights to this material. They believe the material is either now public domain or that the rights holder has no objection to its release.

For now, this book is limited to the original buyers of the Fred Braue notebooks and to those who buy the 8 volume sets now offered.

The hope is that releasing this material will help make up for the unfinished state the project was left in a few years ago, and further strengthen the legacy and reputation of Mr. Braue.

If you were one of the original buyers of the Fred Braue Notebooks, please contact orders@conjuringarts.org about receiving a PDF of The Unpublished Fred Braue Notebooks. Conjuring Arts has the original subscription records of Mr. Busby, so your subscription to the Notebooks can be verified.

8 1/2 x 11 inch format, spiral-bound.
Volume 1 - 35 pages
Volume 2 - 33 pages
Volume 3 - 33 pages
Volume 4 - 34 pages
Volume 5 - 33 pages
Volume 6 - 34 pages
Volume 7 - 37 pages
Volume 8 - 34 pages
Unpublished Fred Braue Notebooks (PDF) - 235 pages

Please note: this item is new and unused, but it has been in storage for decades, so you may find issues such as rusted staples or bowed pages.

From the "Fred Braue Notebooks Prospectus," 1985:

Fred Braue, who wrote the celebrated EXPERT CARD TECHNIQUE and ROYAL ROAD TO CARD MAGIC with Jean Hugard, left behind a rich body of unpublished material when he died in 1962. A superb technician, he knew the "real work" on the latest developments in card and close-up magic, yet much of his work was still unpublished when he died. His session notebooks, and the notebooks of his own effects and sleights, are simply astounding. They hold literally hundreds of fully written effects that have never been printed.

In its original form, THE FRED BRAUE NOTEBOOKS runs to roughly 1000 pages of typewritten text covering some 30 years of creative thinking and record keeping. The few top magicians who have seen the large amount of still unpublished Braue material have been amazed by its depth and scope.
Most of the material in THE FRED BRAUE NOTEBOOKS is card magic invented by Braue, including sophisticated sleights, close-up card routines and platform card work. There is a complete general work on card magic, several hundred pages long, that Braue was writing when he died, called SLEIGHTS. There is a complete book of new routines and original card sleights that never had a working title. THE FRED BRAUE NOTEBOOKS also include the suppressed material from two classics, material meant for EXPERT CARD TECHNIQUE and ROYAL ROAD TO CARD MAGIC that for various reasons was never printed. In short, there is a wide range of original sleights, moves, effects and routines with cards.

There is also non-card material that will interest any magician, including the Braue routine for the Sympathetic Silks, other silk effects, visual gags, Linking Rings, coins, and a section on the Cups and Balls with a complete description of the Braue Cups and Balls routine, a clever routine using five balls of which only three are ever seen. There is also a full description of the ball vanish Max Malini used in his Cups and Balls routine.

The series of THE FRED BRAUE NOTEBOOKS will include the session notebooks Braue kept, with detailed notes on the magicians he met and the material they showed him, a fascinating look at the "underground" of that era. The series includes effects and routines by these legendary names: Charlie Miller, T. Nelson Downs, Dai Vernon, Max Malini, Paul Rosini, Dr. Elliott, Nate Leipzig, Paul LePaul, Bert Allerton, Jack McMillen, Tenkai, Emil Jarrow and many others.

In most cases these are not just "notes" but complete descriptions written by a professional writer. It is a wealth of material that has never been printed, now being released for the first time.