COTTINGLEY FAIRIES | Complete collection of five photographs, 1920

COTTINGLEY FAIRIES 

A Complete Collection of the five photographs, including: 

"A. Alice and the Fairies | Photograph taken July, 1917", (73 x 97mm.)

"B. Iris and the Gnome | Photograph taken Sept., 1917" (98 x 73mm.) 

"C. Alice and the Leaping Fairy | Photograph taken August, 1920" (100 x 78mm.)  

"D. Fairy offering flowers to Iris | Photograph taken August, 1920" (100 x 76mm.)

"E. Fairy Sunbath, Elves etc. | Photograph taken August, 1920"(98 x 76mm.)

each matt silver print, captioned, mounted, with tissue guard, housed in a brown card wallet, one of the wallets with paper label of the Theosophical Book Shop, 42 George Street, Edinburgh 

“I HAVE CONVINCED MYSELF THAT THERE IS OVERWHELMING EVIDENCE FOR THE FAIRIES” (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Coming of the Fairies)

From July 1917 onwards, in the small village of Cottingley, near Bingley in Yorkshire, the fifteen-year old Elsie Wright and her ten-year-old cousin Frances Griffiths produced a series of photographs (some taken as late as August 1920) showing fairies and gnomes in rural settings, mostly in company with one or other of the girls themselves. The theosophist Edward L. Gardner, who was interested in the paranormal, came to hear of them, as did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who subsequently wrote extensively about them in Strand Magazine (December 1920 and March 1921) and in his full-length book The Coming of the Fairies. 

Despite attracting ridicule from sceptics in the huge publicity which ensued, Doyle, Gardner and others involved remained resolute in their belief in the genuineness of the photographs as bearing witness to protoplasmic thought forms emanating from the girl’s psychic auras. To Conan Doyle, the photos were a sign of hope: “Maybe it is an indication that we are reaching the silver lining of the clouds when we find ourselves suddenly presented with actual photographs of these enchanting little creatures – relegated long since to the realm of the imaginary and the fanciful.”

To protect the girls anonymity the photographs were originally captioned with the names 'Alice' and 'Iris' as is the case here. It is likely that these prints were originally made to sell at theosophical lectures.