FAIRIES: The Cottingley Photos and Their Sequel.

London: The Theosophical Publishing House., 1945. First edition. Publisher's original quarter light-blue cloth over beige paper-covered boards with titles in black to the upper board. Lacking the dustwrapper. Illustrated with five full-page black and white photographic plates. Two related newspaper cuttings loosely laid in. A near fine copy, the binding square and firm with a little toning to the edges of the boards and minor wear to the corners. The contents with a touch of toning to the front free endpaper where the newspaper cuttings have sat are otherwise clean and fresh throughout. An excellent copy. The first edition of this exploratory discussion regarding the famous photographs of the 'Cottingley Fairies', taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths in 1917 and 1920, by the theosophist Edward L. Gardner (1869-1969). Gardner served as the original investigator of these images, which supposedly captured the two girls' encounter with fairies at the bottom of their garden in Cottingley, near Bradford. It was Gardner who brought the photographs to the attention of Sherlock Holmes author Arthur Conan Doyle, whose subsequent article in the Strand Magazine, and later book "The Coming of the Fairies" (1922), led to intense public interest in the case. In the later years of their lives, Elsie and Frances ultimately admitted that the photographs were faked, using cardboard cut-outs of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time, although with Frances maintaining that the fifth and final photograph was genuine. The present book, serving as a follow-up to Conan Doyle's work, reproduces all five of the original photographs in a large format, with accompanying text by Gardner examining in detail the girls' testimony, defending his original conclusions regarding the genuineness of the photographs, and providing further supporting evidence regarding the possibility of the existence of fairies.