Fearsome Fairies Haunting Tales of the Fae

by Dearnley, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780712354301
• ISBN10: 0712354301
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2022-10-01
• Publisher: British Library Publishing

Summary

Fearsome Fairies taps into the enormous fascination with fairies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and includes cornerstone authors of the Weird genre such as Arthur Machen, M R James and Charlotte Riddell.

You see – no, you do not, but I see – such curious faces: and the people to whom they belong flit about so oddly, often at your elbow when you least expect it, and looking close into your face, as if they were searching for someone – who may be thankful, I think, if they do not find him.

There was an enormous fascination with fairies in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries which popularised depictions of benevolent, butterfly-winged beings and glittering pantomime figures. But the fae have always had a more sinister side. Taking inspiration from folk tales and medieval legends, the works of weird tale and ghost story writers such as Arthur Machen, M. R. James, Angela Carter and Charlotte Riddell show that fairies, goblins and other supernatural entities could be something far more unsettling.

Delving into a frightening realm of otherworldly creatures from banshees to changelings, this new collection of stories revives and revels in the fearsome power of the fairy folk.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Dearnley is a folklorist, artist and researcher based at the University of London and the University of Wolverhampton. Her work explores fairy tales, horror and collective storytelling, and she has curated several projects including immersive 1940s Red Riding Hood retelling Big Teeth, and The Sandman for the Freud Museum, London. Her anthology Into the London Fog was published in the British Library Tales of the Weird series.

Table of Contents

CONTENTS
introduction 7
acknowledgements 18
1 The Banshee’s Warning (1867)
Charlotte Riddell 19
2 Laura Silver Bell (1872)
J. Sheridan Le Fanu 43
3 The White People (1904)
Arthur Machen 59
4 In the Closed Room (1904)
Frances Hodgson Burnett 103
5 Lock-out Time (1906)
J.M. Barrie 135
6 By the Yellow Moonrock (1921)
Fiona Macleod 147
7 After Dark in the Playing Fields (1924)
M.R. James 163
8 The Case of the Leannabh Sidhe (1945)
Margery Lawrence 169
9 The Trod (1946)
Algernon Blackwood 253
10 The Erl-King (1979)
Angela Carter 287
11 Concerning a Boy and a Girl Emerging from the Earth (1980)
Randolph Stow 299
12 In Yon Green Hill to Dwell (2014)
Jane Alexander 321
appendix: The Cottingley Fairy Photographs 333