The Coming of the Fairies

This book is completely bonkers. Supposedly it is a factual account presenting what may be proof of the existence of fairies. The first half of the book is devoted to the 'famous Cottingley photographs' and the second half to miscellaneous accounts of other fairies. Sadly the picture quality is so poor and the pictures devoid of helpful arrows that I can't even entirely make out what fairies I'm supposed to be looking at in some cases.

The first half of the book is okay. It's perfectly readable. In fact, the first time I read it many years ago when I considered myself a huge Doyle fan simply because I happened to find the Sherlock Holmes short stories amusing, I found that the style was so similar to that of Doyle's science fiction and show more fantasy short stories that this must also be an extended work of fiction (albeit perpetuating someone else's prank). Reading now, that can't be the case because much of the book is simply quoted text from other people, which would have been traceable when the book was new (nearly 100 years ago), so I guess everyone just wrote in the exact same style back then.

Doyle, mostly through a man called Gardner, presents us with the evidence of the existence of fairies, namely five photographs taken by two young women in Yorkshire. He also presents the criticism of the so-called evidence, so you get both sides of the story, or at least a little bit of it. It's all done through third and fourth parties. It's like looking at evidence down the wrong end of a telescope. Gardner and therefore Doyle fixate on certain details and ignore others. The photographs are proved not to have been faked in a laboratory, but they hardly even consider whether they were therefore faked at the actual taking the photo stage. We are endlessly told that it would simply be impossible, even though the photos are very clearly of DRAWINGS. Gardner, or someone, has a look at the girls' art and says it isn't good enough to convince, and the matter is dropped, ignoring the possibility of either tracing or just general deception. One piece of criticism points out that the fairies are completely static, but because the first expert who examined the photos says that you can see they are moving, that point is never reexamined. Meanwhile, one person even points out that the fairies look flat, and this is used as proof rather than picked up on as criticism. And worried about shadows? No fear, Doyle will tell you about ectoplasm. We are told that we should trust people simply because they are respectable, as if that means something concrete.

Doyle spends nearly all of this time going off on tangents about sceptics to spiritualism, which has absolutely nothing to do with this. The poor man seems to have lived in a similar era to now, where everywhere you step you tread on an internet troll and so he spends most of the book basically saying 'haters gonna hate' and pooh-poohing scepticism because he's sick of people deriding his religion and rolling his eyes at them, despite the fact that life after death and a new species of creature have pretty much nothing in common. Due to this, he also presents spiritualist ideas and statements from psychics as absolute fact. He does admit that other spiritualists are among the sceptics, since they don't need anyone else's BS tainting their already maligned ideals.

But then you get to the second half of the book, where things really start to lose it. In the incredibly dull chapter 'Observations of a clairvoyant in the Cottingley Glen, August 1921' we get the very boring and seemingly endless account from a clairvoyant who visits the two girls who took the fairy photos and apparently sees THOUSANDS of random fantastical creatures all over the place, despite the fact that this doesn't tie in at all with the original photos. We are told that the girls weren't able to take any more photos during this time (hmm, what a shock it was the only time they were accompanied) because of bad weather, which is completely contradicted by this man saying they see the fairies all the time. So why didn't any of you try to photograph them then? It's actually quite disturbing reading his account, because he must have been completely insane, and yet he was allowed to spend all this time alone with these two girls.

The rest of the book contains various random accounts from random people claiming to have seen fairies. For some reason Doyle thinks that anecdotes count as evidence, he also openly and repeatedly talks about psychics and spiritualists in scientific factual terms, as if these ideas can't be argued with and therefore whatever they say is factual evidence rather than some thing a person is just saying and possibly just making up. But no, they are respectable and have no reason to lie so therefore they absolutely must be telling the truth.

The really painful part of all this, is that NONE of the accounts match up. Everyone who claims to have seen fairies, be they children or adults, contemporary or historical, clairvoyant or not, give utterly contradictory and unique accounts. And somehow Doyle, despite even commenting on the differences sometimes even with a hint of scepticism, doesn't seem to understand that since every account fails to corroborate each other, he is actually unravelling his own case. The book ends with more quoted extracts, this time from a theosophist, which according to Doyle is the only religion that believes in fairies. The account that follows is so openly stated as fact, just full on listing all the varieties of fairies and how they live and work, that again, it's kind of scary.

Doyle never really feels like he cares that much about the subject - all his research is second hand. He just seems to be in on it because if one thing that didn't used to have proof can become scientifically accepted, then his own beliefs are in with a chance.

The excitement over the original photos is interesting to read about, although it's so hard to imagine from a modern perspective, where anything can be faked and no one believes anyone, but the rambling accounts of other fairies are varyingly dull or creepy. Maybe I'm just jealous because I've never seen anything magical, but I keep wondering what's wrong with these people, are they lying and therefore mocking Doyle or are they insane and if so, did it go untreated? Either way, it makes me uncomfortable. show less

The sad coda to Arthur Conan Doyle’s great career was his belief in spiritualism. The man responsible for the famous line “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth,” spent his final years clinging to every impossibility that he found. This book is his account of Cottingley Fairies incident, including his article in The Strand Magazine, and the work of Doyle and his partner Edward Gardner in investigating the claims.

As a primary source, it’s an interesting look inside the mind of man desperately trying to prove the truth of something ignored by science. It’s rather interesting to see the focus on various forms of darkroom trickery, and not the obvious explanation that the show more fairies are painted cardstock cleverly posed. There are some interesting glimpses of English theosophy, but mostly the impression that they’re willing to believe in anything other than mundane reality; etheric matter, phasic vibrations, auras, and of course tiny dancing woodland elves in rich taxonomy. The saddest chapter is one where Doyle sends another friend, a “Sergeant Tank” with the gift of clairvoyance to Cottingley, and he reports tons of fairies in great detail without a single photograph.

This is an important book, for say an academic studying cryptozoology, or cultural research on belief in the supernatural, but there’s little pleasure and less information in reading it. show less

I found this book at a thrift store - and only bought it because Sir Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes, wrote it. Without knowing much about the Cottingley Fairies, or much about Mr. Doyle - this book seemed so out of place with the authors belief - but doing a bit of Googling and reading the introduction, you find out exactly what Conan Doyle believed - which wasn't the overly logical world of Sherlock Holmes.

I'm not going to rate this book - because, as a book, its a hodgepodge of tin foil hat folks - who I can't determine if they really believe what they say, or are scammers. But, the book is interesting historically, into how the spiritual movement viewed the world. There is a lot of woo-woo stuff in here, and the author show more very much believed it. For example, fairies were some sort of insect, and that a fairy "cocoon" or nest was caught in film.

The story of the Cottingley fairies (not the story in this book) is quite hilarious - two girls, borrowed a camera, took a picture of fairies cut out from paper, which got noticed by grown men in the spiritualist movement. This book is written so seriously, Doyle so much wants to believe in this that he glosses over the holes in the theory, while trying to put a "scientific" veneer over the story.

The book itself is not that good - at times, to rambly - other times, the language gets in the way. But, it is a fascinating look into the belief in fairies and Conan Doyle.

Highly recommended if you like odd history, or are into the life of Conan Doyle. show less

I thought this worth a look for curiosity's sake to see what led the great author to be convinced that fairies really existed. This short book focuses on: whether the Cottingley photos could have been tampered with; accounts of alleged sightings around the world by various people; and, most strangely, another spiritualist's views on how fairies fit into natural processes like pollination, and discussion of different races and colours of fairies in different parts of the world. While he is hugely sympathetic, Doyle does not come right out and say fairies definitely exist; but, it is certainly the outcome that he wishes to be given just that final evidential push to become, in his view, a certainty. 3/5

I'd heard of the Cottingley Fairy pictures before but it was only after reading The Cottingley Secret that I learned about this book.

This was written when the events were happening, at a time when belief in fairies was more accepted. It was a time when people wanted to believe in fairies and magic, so when two little girls gave them pictures claiming to prove their existence, they didn't get thrown out as some type of hoax. Rather, it was almost as hard to believe that the pictures were faked as it was to believe in fairies.

After all, this was a hundred years ago, these girls did not gave an easy way to alter a photo. It was also said to be their first time taking a picture.

Arthur Conan Doyle very much believed in fairies and other show more similar life forms.

My edition of the book did not actually have the pictures. I've seen them online but the book definitely could have benefited from their addition.

This is quite a short book too.
It was definitely interesting to know that everything in the book was real people's accounts of what happened.

I'd definitely recommend reading The Cottingley Secret. It's fiction but it's fantastic. Having this book on hand is a good idea, I enjoyed reading this afterwards. show less

Just when you think fairies might actually be real ...

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