There’s a new book written for 8- to 12-year-olds about seven women from magic’s Golden Age. It comes from author Anna Hays and is called Vanished: Seven Women Magicians Who Simply Disappeared.
The magicians didn’t literally disappear, of course; the premise is that they made a mark on the art and the general public during their lives, but have faded from the spotlight over the years. Hays showcases Anna Eva Fay, Adelaide Herrmann, Talma, Minerva, Dixie Haygood (aka Annie Abbott), Ellen Armstrong, and Bess Houdini, with the book’s blurb describing them as people who “followed their hearts and pursued their dreams of performing magic in the spotlight when women had neither a vote nor a voice in America.”
Hays, whose background is in film, was introduced to magic via her husband, who is an avid amateur. The two attend shows regularly at The Magic Castle, and she noticed that there were fewer women than men performing magic.
That inspired her initially to consider writing a novel about a girl magician before deciding to go the nonfiction route and describing the performers.
Hays was originally going to write the book solely focused on Anna Eva Fay, but decided to expand it to other performers from the Golden Age of Magic, which Vanished categorizes as being from roughly 1860 to 1930.
“I went through that timeline, and different women popped out, each representing a different kind of magic,” she told The Eye, adding that the book roughly jumps 10 to 15 years between performers and also incorporates how the “evolution of things like technology and transportation influenced how women, or magicians in general, moved through the country.”
The book features illustrations of each magician. “I wanted to feel like performances were going on in each chapter, so the images that we created… weren’t just frames of women in their costumes,” Hays explained. “They are women in action doing their signature tricks.” The end of Vanished includes a “scrapbook” of photos of each woman as well.
Book illustrations by Mary Kate McDevitt, for Penguin Random House