Sherlock Holmes is thought for approaching all mysteries with cool logic – and but when his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle noticed images taken by two younger ladies purporting to indicate actual life fairies at play… he unwisely declared them real.
How did Elsie and Frances idiot so many individuals with their pictures… and why did they preserve the hoax going for many years?
Additional studying and listening
The definitive supply is Geoffrey Crawley’s 10-part sequence “That Astonishing Affair of the Cottingley Fairies”, printed within the British Journal of Pictures 1981-82
Different sources embody Russell Miller, The Adventures of Arthur Conan Doyle; Frances Griffiths, Reflections on the Cottingley Fairies; and Peter Lamont and Richard Wiseman Magic In Concept.
Harvey Sacks “Everybody Has To Lie,” was printed in in B. Blount and M. Sanches (eds.) Sociocultural Dimensions of Language Use, Tutorial Press, New York, NY, pp. 57–80 and usefully summarised in Shankar Vedantam and Invoice Mesler Helpful Delusions.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s personal account is in The Coming of the Fairies.
