The
Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright (1901–1988) and Frances Griffiths (1907–1986), two young cousins who lived in
Cottingley, near
Bradford in England. In 1917, when the first two photographs were taken, Elsie was 16 years old and Frances was 9. The pictures came to the attention of writer Sir
Arthur Conan Doyle, who used them to illustrate an article on
fairies he had been commissioned to write for the Christmas 1920 edition of
The Strand Magazine. Doyle, as a
spiritualist, was enthusiastic about the photographs, and interpreted them as clear and visible evidence of
psychic phenomena. Public reaction was mixed; some accepted the images as genuine, others believed that they had been faked.
Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls married and lived abroad for a time after they grew up, and yet the photographs continued to hold the public imagination. In 1966 a reporter from the
Daily Express newspaper traced Elsie, who had by then returned to the United Kingdom. Elsie left open the possibility that she believed she had photographed her thoughts, and the media once again became interested in the story.
In the early 1980s Elsie and Frances admitted that the photographs were faked, using cardboard cutouts of fairies copied from a popular children's book of the time, but Frances maintained that the fifth and final photograph was genuine. As of 2019 the photographs and the cameras used are in the collections of the
National Science and Media Museum in
Bradford, England. In December 2019 the third camera used to take the images was acquired and is scheduled[
needs update] to complete the exhibition.
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