Fairy Spell

The true story of British cousins who fooled the world for more than 60 years with a remarkable hoax, photographs of “real” fairies.

In 1917, in Cottingley, England, a girl named Elsie took a picture of her younger cousin, Frances. Also in the photo was a group of fairies, fairies that the girls insisted were real. Through a remarkable set of circumstances, that photograph and the ones that followed came to be widely believed as evidence of real fairies. It was not until 1983 that the girls, then late in life, confessed that the Cottingley Fairies were a hoax. Their take is an extraordinary slice of history, from a time when anything in a photograph was assumed to be fact and it was possible to trick an eager public into believing something magical. Exquisitely illustrated with art and the original fairy photographs.

Museum Members receive a 10% Discount on this product.  Please use MEMBER in the Discount Code box on the MY CART page at check-out.