Why a Booktrail?
1917, 1920s: Who would have believed that such small people could cause such a big stir?
The Fairy Ring
What you need to know before your trail
This is the story of two little girls who fooled the world into thinking that they had actually seen fairies in the local woods . Frances was nine when she first saw the fairies. They were tiny men, dressed all in green. Nobody but Frances saw them, so her cousin Elsie painted paper fairies and took photographs of them “dancing” around Frances to make the grown-ups stop teasing. The girls promised each other they would never, ever tell that the photos weren’t real. But how were Frances and Elsie supposed to know that their photographs would fall into the hands of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle? And who would have dreamed that the man who created the famous detective Sherlock Holmes believed ardently in fairies– and wanted very much to see one?
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The Cottingley Fairies
Elsie Wright (1901–88) and Frances Griffiths (1907–86), were two young cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England.
The first two photographs were taken in 1917 when Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 9.
The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who, as a spiritualist was very keen to find out more. He hoped that the photographs would proof that a person’s thoughts could be captured on film and that fairy folk could be summonsed by believing in them.
Public reaction was mixed at first; whilst some accepted the images as genuine, others believed they had been faked. Interest in them wained after 1921 but the girls were traced again in the 1960s and Elsie still said that she believed she had photographed her thoughts.
It wasn’t until the early 1980s that Elsie and Frances admitted that the photographs were faked, but Frances maintained that the fifth and final photograph was in fact genuine.
The photographs and two of the cameras used are on display in the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, England.
Booktrail Boarding Pass: The Fairy Ring
Destination: Cottingley Author/Guide: Mary Losure Departure Time: 1912, 1920s
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