In 1917, two young cousins carried a camera into an English dell and returned with a photo of fairies. When Arthur Conan Doyle took up the story it became a worldwide sensation. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll tell the story of the Cottingley Fairies, a curiosity that would remain unexplained for most of the 20th century.
We'll also remember a ferocious fire and puzzle over a troublesome gnome.
Intro:
Poet Harry Graham found "a simple plan / Which makes the lamest lyric scan."
In the 1920s, Otto Funk fiddled across the United States.
Sources for our feature on the Cottingley fairies:
Jason Loxton et al., "The Cottingley Fairies," Skeptic 15:3 (2010), 72B,73-81.
Russell Miller, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle: A Biography, 2008.
Arthur Conan Doyle, The Coming of the Fairies, 1922.
Timothy R. Levine, Encyclopedia of Deception, 2014.
Jerome Clark, Encyclopedia of Strange and Unexplained Physical Phenomena, 1993.
Joe Cooper, "Cottingley: At Last the Truth," The Unexplained 117 (1982), 2338-2340.
A. Conan Doyle, "The Cottingley Fairies: An Epilogue," Strand 65:2 (February 1923), 105.
Kaori Inuma, "Fairies to Be Photographed!: Press Reactions in 'Scrapbooks' to the Cottingley Fairies," Correspondence: Hitotsubashi Journal of Arts and Literature 4 (2019), 53-84.
Douglas A. Anderson, "Fairy Elements in British Literary Writings in the Decade Following the Cottingley Fairy Photographs Episode," Mythlore 32:1 (Fall/Winter 2013), 5-18.
Bruce Heydt, "The Adventure of the Cottingley Fairies," British Heritage 25:2 (May 2004), 20-25.
Helen Nicholson, "Postmodern Fairies," History Workshop Journal 46 (Autumn 1998), 205-212.
Michael W. Homer and Massimo Introvigne, "The Recoming of the Fairies," Theosophical History 6 (1996), 59-76.
Alex Owen, "'Borderland Forms': Arthur Conan Doyle, Albion's Daughters, and the Politics of the Cottingley Fairies," History Workshop 38 (1994), 48-85.
"The First, and Best Known, of the Cottingley Fairy Photographs," Nature 346:6281 (July 19, 1990), 232.
"Away With the Fairies," Country Life, Nov. 11, 2020, 128-129.
Leslie Gardner, "Notes on Mr S. F. Sanderson's Presidential Address, 21 March 1973, on 'The Cottingley Fairy Photographs,'" Folklore 86:3/4 (Autumn-Winter 1975), 190-194.
S.F. Sanderson, "The Cottingley Fairy Photographs: A Re-Appraisal of the Evidence," Folklore 84:2 (Summer 1973), 89-103.
David Barnett, "Fairy Tales," Independent, March 28, 2021.
"Cottingley Fairies: How Sherlock Holmes's Creator Was Fooled by Hoax," BBC News, Dec. 5, 2020.
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