The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England.
Hoax perpetrated by Theodore Hook in Westminster, England, in 1810. Hook had made a bet with his friend, Samuel Beazley, that he could transform any house in London into the most talked-about address in a week.
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| Cottingley Fairies | |
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| The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two cousins who lived in Cottingley, near Bradford in England. (Image included) |
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The Cottingley Fairies are a series of five photographs taken in 1917–1920 by two young cousins, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, in the village of Cottingley, West Yorkshire. They show the girls apparently interacting with tiny fairies, which captured the public imagination and even convinced notable believers in the supernatural such as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when published in The Strand Magazine in 1920.
Early reactions to the photographs were mixed; believers saw them as proof of the supernatural while sceptics doubted their authenticity. In 1983 the cousins admitted that the photographs were hoaxes created with cardboard cut-outs and hatpins, although one of them continued to claim that the final picture was genuine.
