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Loading... Lady Cottington's Fairy Album (edition 2002)by Brian Froud
Work InformationLady Cottington's Fairy Album by Brian Froud
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Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. No current Talk conversations about this book. On her sixteenth birthday Angelica Cottington discovers an album that had once belonged to her sister Euphemia. It had been twelve years since her sister had passed, a sister she bearly remembered but for a few kindnesses. However the entries with this album reveal to Angelica the character of a girl lead astray by the fairies, portraying Euphemia as she has never been revealed before. Lady Clottington's Pressed Fairy Album continues Angelica's story, and fairy pressing, through the revealing entries of a lost album. In this we learn not only of Euphemia's life and love of capturing fairies in photos, we learn of Angelica's reactions to her sisters exploits. But the most shocking truth of all is still to come, if only Angelica could refrain from squashing fairies for a moment or too. Another beautifully constructed and elegantly pictured book in the cottington series. Way back in 1994 Brian Froud and Terry Jones got together and created Lady Cottington’s Pressed Fairy Book, which was an immediate hit (and a huge bestseller). Their faux-Victorian book of various smashed, crushed, and smooshed fairies was a delight wonderful pictures by Froud and hysterical text by Jones. A Pressed Fairy Journal followed in 1996, and then both went out of print and became scarcer than hen’s teeth. A paperback version of the original book was released in 2001 and it garnered a whole new set of fans. And now, at last, Lady Cottington is back and it’s well worth the wait. The original book was a lark, with Froud’s hilarious pictures highlighting Jones’s tale of a VERY proper Victorian lady beset by naughty fairies. This book has the same antic artwork, and is undeniably funny in places, but it’s something more, too. The book purports to be a newly discovered photo album by Angelica Cottington’s older sister Euphemia (who is referred to just once, as Effie, in the original book) with later commentary by Angelica. Euphemia’s story and photos unfold on the left side of the book; Angelica’s commentary and fairy victims appear on the right. The two stories come together in a letter at the end which we get to see and which Angelica presumably did not and the effect is surprising and poignant and leads you to think about this book long after it has ended. The funny stuff I expected; the other stuff I didn’t, and the book is much stronger than you might expect because of it. Froud has pulled off the near impossible: a sequel that not only equals the original, but surpasses it. The packaging is gorgeous, from the textured cover to the beautiful endpapers. The artwork, both the photos and the drawings, is first-rate but the true heart of this book is the story, which manages to amuse and surprise in equal measure What started out as what I assume to be a bit of comic relief, Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, and its subsequent volumes, turned into something of its own fairy tale. Through each volume, we gain a little more insight into the world of Angelica Cottington, who masters the art of pressing fairies in her books, to preserve them and show the world the truth. I give each book 4 stars, but really, the second book is what brings the three volumes together as something more than whimsy. The first volume, Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book, I'm quite sure was meant nothing more than a bit of humor. We follow the adventures of Lady Cottington as a small girl as she begins to notice the fairies around her and as she discovers the pressing technique to preserve them in her books. In Lady Cottington's Fairy Album we learn a little more of Lady Cottington's heritage, and this is where I think the series, while still deep in it's whimsical foundations, takes a turn for the more "serious." With Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Letters, we are presented with letters from the likes of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rasputin, Houdini, Helen Keller and more, as Lady Cottington continues her journey of discovery. The artwork throughout remains consistently humorous, with each fairy pressing more ridiculous than the last. A truly unique reading experience. no reviews | add a review
Belongs to SeriesLady Cottington (3)
This sequel to Lady Cottington's Pressed Fairy Book features 15-year-old Lady Angelica Cottington as she finds an annotated photo album which reveals fairy enchantments, wanton romance and bawdy trysts, casting Lady Cottington's ancestry into shocking doubt. No library descriptions found. |
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Google Books — Loading... GenresMelvil Decimal System (DDC)398.45Social sciences Customs, Etiquette, Folklore Folklore Paranatural and legendary phenomena as subjects of folklore Paranormal beings of human and semihuman formLC ClassificationRatingAverage:
Is this you?Become a LibraryThing Author. Hachette Book GroupAn edition of this book was published by Hachette Book Group. |
Angelica Cottington is 16 years old when she finds a diary of her long-deceased older sister, Euphemia. Euphemia has photographed several fairies, and writes about her adventures with them in the woods. Twelve years later, Angelica is appalled by her sister's behaviour. Angelica detests fairies and squashes them dead in the very diary her sister left praising them.
As we read the diary entries and Angelica's notes, we come to understand what really happened to Euphemia. A lovely fairy tale indeed! ( )