100 Fairy Books That You Should Read Before You Die | Non-Fiction 11-30

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Books 11-30 are in alphabetical order

ashliman

11) Ashliman, D.L. Fairy Lore: A Handbook (London: Greenwood Press 2006)

Pages: 229

Status: Common (10 dollars used)

Description: The contents say it all – ‘Introduction’; ‘Definitions and Classifications’; ‘Examples and Texts’, ‘Scholarship and Beliefs’; and ‘Contexts’. A little-cited but indispensable book

Off-site review: Good Reads http://www.ebook3000.com/Fairy-Lore–A-Handbook_108484.html

goblinproofing

12) Bakeley, Reginald Goblinproofing One’s Chicken Coop And Other Practical Advice In Our Campaign Against the Fairy Kingdom (San Francisco: Conari 2013)

Pages: 185

Status: Common (10 dollars?)

Description: You shouldn’t really make fun of the fairies, but if you do… Hilarious description of how to fight fairy incursions.

Off-site reviews: The Guardian

shaman

13) Behringer, Wolfang Shaman of Oberstdorf: Chonrad Stoeckhlin and the Phantoms of the Night (Virginia: University of Virginia Press, 1998)

Pages: 200

Status: Very common (5 dollars second-hand?)

Description: The life and death of a fairy-witch from the Alps with fascinating references to fairy belief and ‘bone miracles’.

Off-site reviews: Magonia 

briggs fairies tradition literature

14) Briggs, Katharine The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (London: Routledge 2011) [first printed 1967]

Pages: 324

Status: Common (10 dollars used?)

Description: the first two thirds deal with traditions overlapping substantially with The Vanishing People by the same author. The last third is a useful overview of the fairy in literature.

dictionary fairies

15) Briggs, Katharine Dictionary of Fairies (London: Viking 1976) [published in the US as An Encylopedia of Fairies, Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies and Other Supernatural Creatures]

Pages: 450

Status: Rare (25 dollars second-hand?)

Description: The single best reference work for fairies.

anatomy puck

16) Briggs, Katherine The Anatomy of Puck: An Examination of Fairy Beliefs among Shakespeare’s Contemporaries and Successors (London, Routledge and Kegan Paul 1959).

Pages: 284

Status: Quite Common (25 dollars used?)

Desciption: The most academic of Briggs’ fairy works (or read on scribd)

cooper cottingley

17) Cooper, Joe The Case of the Cottingley Fairies (London, Robert Hale Limited 1990)

Pages: 240

Status: Common (5 dollars second-hand?)

Description: The man who solved the mystery of the Cottingley Fairies: from believer to reluctant disbeliever.

hobgoblin sweet puck

18) Edwards, Gillian Hobgoblin and Sweet Puck: Fairy Names & Natures (Altrincham Geoffrey Bles 1974)

Pages: 229

Status: Very common (5 dollars second hand)

Description: The only etymological guide to fairies available. Limited to forays into the Oxford English Dictionary but still extremely useful.

faeries froud and lee

19) Froud, Brian and Alan Lee Faeries (New York, Abrams 2009)

Pages: c. 300 (unnumbered!)

Status: Common (10 dollars second-hand?)

Description: The most famous modern fairy art collection, now updated.

Off-site review: Good Reads

gaffin transpersonal

20) Gaffin, Dennis Running with the Fairies: Towards a Transpersonal Anthropology of Religion (Newcastle-upon-Tyne: Cambridge Scholars 2012)

Pages: 290

Status: Rare (50 dollars?)

Description: An American anthrolopogist travels to Ireland to meet a fairy circle, who believe themselves reincarnations of fairies past.

Off-site Review: Strange History http://www.strangehistory.net/2013/01/28/review-running-with-the-fairies/

hartland

21) Hartland, Edwin Sidney The Science Of Fairy Tales An Inquiry Into Fairy Mythology (London: Walter Scott Publishing, 1890)

Page: 372

Status: Free online at Archive, http://archive.org/details/scienceoffairyta012199mbp

Description: Perhaps the single most sophisticated Victorian survey of fairylore.

scottish fairy belief

22) Henderson, Lizanne and Edward J. Cowan Scottish Fairy Belief (East Linton: Tuckwell Press, 2001)

Pages: 242

Status: Common (10 dollars second-hand?)

Description: Best guide to Scottish fairies, highland and lowland, with wider applications.

Off-site Review: Scottish Tradition (pdf safe file)

goodwin wharton

23) Clark, J. Kent Goodwin Wharton (London, Sphere Books 1989) [first published 1984]

Pages: 390

Status: Very Common (5 dollars second hand)

Description: A hilarious but completely factual look at the relationship between a seventeenth-century English aristocrat, a swindler (Mary Parish) and the fairies, all based on his diary.

Off-site review: Strange History

witches werewolves fairies

24) Lecouteux, Claude Witches, Werewolves and Fairies: Shapeshifters and Astral Doubles in the Middle Ages (Rochester: Inner Traditions, 2003)

Pages: 200

Status: Common (10 dollars second-hand?)

Description: The author explains witch, werewolf and fairy beliefs to the idea of soul travel, which, he suggests survived into the Middle Ages and beyond.

Off-site Reviews: Herbal Witchcraft 

good people narvaez

25) Narváez, Peter (ed) The Good People: New Fairylore Essays (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press 1991)

Pages: 530

Status: Quite Common (20 dollars used)

Description: A score of fairy essays by different experts in the field: nothing else like this book…

26) Silver, Carole Strange and Secret Peoples: Fairies and Victorian Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999)

Pages: 250

Status: Quite common (15 dollars used?

Description: the best overview of fairies in the Victorian period with an undeniable bias though towards literature.

Off-site Reviews: New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/reviews/981206.06kincait.html

tame real fairies

27) Tame, David Real Fairies: True Accounts of Meetings with Nature Spirits (Chievely: Capall Bann 1999)

Pages: 131

Status: Very common (5 dollars second-hand?)

Description: Useful collection of eye-witness accounts from throughout history.

Off-site Review:  Terrain Walker

yeats irish writings legend myth

28) Yeats, W.B. Writings on Irish Folklore, Legend and Myth (London: Penguin, 1993)

Pages: 450

Status: Common (5 dollars second-hand?)

Description: Though restricted to Ireland and Scotland Yeats’ essays have larger applications.

waldron reeve shock

29) Waldron, David and Christopher Reeve, Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay: A Case Study in Local Folklore (Milton Keynes: Hidden Publishing 2010)

Pages: 142

Status: Common (10 dollars second hand?)

Description: A fascinating analysis of the most famous ‘black dog’ story of them all, Bungay 1577, with a history not just of the dog’s rampage but its afterlife in folklore and identity.

Off-site review: Fortean Times 

brian walsh secret commonwealth

30) Walsh, Brian The Secret Commonwealth and the Fairy Belief Complex (Xlibris 2002)

Pages: 212

Status: Quite Common (15 dollars second-hand?)

Description: The best edition and the best discussion of Kirk’s Secret Commonwealth: note all Kirk’s text is here; don’t waste money on other books.

For 31-100

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