Lot Essay
Two of the most controversial and widely debated photographs in Britain in the early twentieth century; a mystery which involved among others, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The negative for the first photograph titled 'Frances and the fairies' was made by Elsie Wright on 7 or 14 July 1917, that for the second image 'Elsie and the Gnome' was made by Frances Griffiths in September 1917. Geoffrey Crawley, who has painstakingly researched the subject, was responsible for finally drawing an admission from the two women in 1983 that the photographs were the result of a hoax. The prints in this lot are similar to those dated 1920 in the collection of Leeds University Library and are made from negatives, thought to be copies, also in their collection. They are not from the series published for commercial sale by H. Snelling and issued on brown card mounts.