FEARSOME FAIRIES: HAUNTING TALES OF THE FAE EDITED BY ELIZABTH DEARNLEY

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