Simon, Bill. Over 35 TLSs from Bill Simon to Faucett Ross. Spanning 1949-68. Lengthy TLSs and several ALSs, most three or four pages, and describing step-by-step methods for tricks (Christ's aces among them), and gossip about magic's "inner circle" in the 1940s: Miller, Vernon, Malini, Dr. Daley, Carlyle, among others. Anecdotes and personal gossip fills many lines: "Dai & I returned from a bull-session at Bruce Elliott's last night and when we went up to Dai's apartment [3:00 am?] we were greeted by Carlyle & Neepy [Vernon's son] playing chess!!" "Dai has something that not only makes the double lift obsolete but also makes all of card magic, as we know it today, as remote and worthless as was the devices used by mystics hundreds of years ago. É I have no idea what the hell it is all about." Other subjects include lengthy discourses on hypnotism, marketed magic effects, magic conventions, Dr. Stanley Jaks and Jimmy Grippo. Most on 4to letterheads and signed "Bill Simon" or "Wm." Neatly organized. A successful businessman in the auto industry, Simon (1927 - 1988) had a keen mind and entered college at the age of 15. One of the best-posted amateur card magicians of his era and a close friend of Dai Vernon, he published three books on card conjuring, and another treatise on mathematical magic. He is perhaps best-remembered by modern magicians as an inventor of several clever sleight-of-hand maneuvers, many of which were published in his now-classic text, Effective Card Magic (Louis Tannen, 1952).