Directory of Cottingley Fairies Resources

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The Cottingley Fairy Incident of 1917 was a photography hoax founded by Frances Griffith (age 10) and Elsie Wright (age 16), cousins, who claimed to have photographed fairies cavorting by the beck (a small stream or brook) in their home town village on the outskirts of Yorkshire England. The pictures were shown to members of the Theosophical Society in nearby Bradford several years after being taken and subsequently garnered the attentions of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Harry Houdini. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's interest in spiritualism led him to declare the photographs as real and valid, believing in the validity of the entire experience until his death. The hoax was not revealed until 1983.

Resources in This Category

• 'Fairy' fakes sell for fortune

  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/134243.stm
  From BBC News, the original Cottingley fairy photographs were sold at auction for £21,620 to British bookseller Simon Finch.

• Cottingley Connect: Cottingley Fairies

  http://www.cottingleyconnect.org.uk/fairies.shtml
  Local site of the Cottingley Village with the story, location tracking of the photographs through history, colourized photographs, a book list and links.

• The Case of the Cottingley Fairies

  http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/cooper.htm
  From Joe Cooper's 1982 article "Cottingley: At Last the Truth."

• The Coming of the Fairies

  http://books.google.com/books/p/pub-4297897631756504?id=xM8Yy-V_WrUC
  Full text book by Arthur Conan Doyle first published in 1922; the author recounts his and others experiences relating to the Cottingly Fairy incident and other fairy sightings.

• The Coming of the Fairies: An Alternative Viewpoint

  http://www.ash-tree.bc.ca/acdsfairies.htm
  Essay by Barbara Roden discussing why Arthur Conan Doyle believed or wanted to believe in fairies.

• The Cottingley Network

  http://www.cottingley.net/
  History of the photographs, investigations, and investigators which followed; images of the location, family, and letters related to the events.

• Wikipedia: Cottingley Fairies

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cottingley_Fairies
  Encyclopedic entry of the five photographs by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths taken in 1917.

Related Categories

• Home > Arts > Literature > Authors > D > Doyle, Arthur Conan
• Home > Arts > Movies > Titles > F > FairyTale
• Home > Arts > Movies > Titles > P > Photographing Fairies
• Home > Regional > Europe > United Kingdom > England > West Yorkshire > Cottingley
• Home > Science > Science in Society > Skeptical Inquiry > Hoaxes

 

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