When in the 1920 Christmas edition of the Strand Magazine Conan Doyle's text appeared with the pithy title “Fairies Photographed – An Epoch Making Event,” more than one reader no doubt rubbed their eyes in amazement. While Conan Doyle's spiritualist convictions had met with relative acceptance, he having indeed shared them with numerous fellow citizens, the same was not true for the idea that fairies existed and one could photograph them. Even if in Iceland there is still today a commission in support of fairies, and also in Great Britain there are places known as “Fairy Glen” (which were already photographed in the nineteenth century), fairies nevertheless belong to the realms of old wives’ tales and children's books (Figure 6.1). The scornful reactions to Conan Doyle's article were hardly surprising. Among them was a poem, which notably links belief in Sherlock Holmes with belief in the fairies:

A cartoon even shows Conan Doyle with dancing fairies in the foreground. Conan Doyle remained unruffled by the critical reactions, even going so far as to incorporate some of them into his brief book The Coming of the Fairies, which appeared two years later. In this he laid all the documents before the “curious reader” in order to allow them to form their own impression. The particular story of the fairy photos dates back to 1917, three years prior, in a little village named Cottingley. As a journalist described it in 1980, Cottingley “is just downhill from Bingley. And Bingley is a suburb of Shipton. And Shipton is a suburb of Bradford. And Bradford is the lesser-known twincity of Leeds.”