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       THE COMING OF THE FAIRIES

       BY

       ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

       Author of “The New Revelation,” “The Vital Message,” “Wanderings of a Spiritualist”

       ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS.

      Copyright © 2018 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be reproduced or copied in any way without the express permission of the publisher in writing

       British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      SIR ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE

      Arthur Conan Doyle was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1859. It was between 1876 and 1881, while studying medicine at the University of Edinburgh, that he began writing short stories, and his first piece was published in Chambers's Edinburgh Journal before he was 20. In 1882, Conan Doyle opened an independent medical practice in Southsea, near Portsmouth. It was here, while waiting for patients, that he turned to writing fiction again, composing his first novel, The Narrative of John Smith.

      In 1887, Conan Doyle's first significant work, A Study in Scarlet, appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual. It featured the first appearance of detective Sherlock Holmes, the protagonist who was to eventually make Conan Doyle's reputation. A prolific writer, Conan Doyle continued to produce a range of fictional works over the following years. In 1893, feeling that the character of Sherlock Holmes was distracting him from his historical novels, he had Holmes apparently plunge to his death in the short story 'The Final Problem'. However, eight years later, following a public outcry from his readers, Conan Doyle 'resurrected' the detective in what is now widely regarded as his magnum opus, The Hound of the Baskervilles.

      Sherlock Holmes went on to feature in fifty-six short stories and four novels, cementing Conan Doyle's reputation as probably the most famous crime writer of all time. Aside from his fiction, Conan Doyle was also a passionate political campaigner – a pamphlet he published in 1902, defending the United Kingdom’s much-criticised role in the Boer War, is seen as a major contributor to his receiving of a knighthood in that same year.

      In his later years, following the death of his son in World War I, Conan Doyle became deeply interested in spiritualism and psychic phenomena, producing several works on the subjects and engaging in a very public friendship and falling out with the American magician Harry Houdini. He died of a heart attack while living in East Sussex in 1930, aged 71.

       PREFACE

      This book contains reproductions of the famous Cottingley photographs, and gives the whole of the evidence in connection with them. The diligent reader is in almost as good a position as I am to form a judgment upon the authenticity of the pictures. This narrative is not a special plea for that authenticity, but is simply a collection of facts the inferences from which may be accepted or rejected as the reader may think fit.

      I would warn the critic, however, not to be led away by the sophistry that because some professional trickster, apt at the game of deception, can produce a somewhat similar effect, therefore the originals were produced in the same way. There are few realities which cannot be imitated, and the ancient argument that because conjurers on their own prepared plates or stages can produce certain results, therefore similar results obtained by untrained people under natural conditions are also false, is surely discounted by the intelligent public.

      I would add that this whole subject of the objective existence of a subhuman form of life has nothing to do with the larger and far more vital question of spiritualism. I should be sorry if my arguments in favour of the latter should be in any way weakened by my exposition of this very strange episode, which has really no bearing upon the continued existence of the individual.

      ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE.

      CROWBOROUGH,

      March 1922.

MR. E. L. GARDNER

       Member of the Executive Committee of the Theosophical Society (England)

      CONTENTS

I	HOW THE MATTER AROSE
II	THE FIRST PUBLISHED ACCOUNT, STRAND CHRISTMAS NUMBER 1920
III	RECEPTION OF THE FIRST PHOTOGRAPHS
IV	THE SECOND SERIES
V	OBSERVATIONS OF A CLAIRVOYANT IN THE COTTINGLEY GLEN, AUGUST 1921
VI	INDEPENDENT EVIDENCE FOR FAIRIES
VII	SOME SUBSEQUENT CASES
VIII	THE THEOSOPHIC VIEW OF FAIRIES

      ILLUSTRATIONS

       MR. E. L. GARDNER

       ELSIE AND THE GNOME

       ELSIE AND FRANCES

       COTTINGLEY BECK AND GLEN

       ELSIE IN 1920, STANDING NEAR WHERE THE GNOME WAS TAKEN IN 1917

       FRANCES IN 1920

       FRANCES AND THE FAIRIES

       ELSIE SEATED ON THE BANK ON WHICH THE FAIRIES WERE DANCING IN 1917 (PHOTO 1920)

       THE FALL OF WATER JUST

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