Nº. 1 of  1

The Oddment Emporium

A Cornucopia of Eclectic Delights

Personal FavouritesOddment Odysseys Ask a Question Archive

Posts tagged Arthur Conan Doyle:

September 23, 2012 with 71 notes
        tags: Mystery. Agatha Christie. Author. History. Mysterious Disappearance. Disappearance. 1920s. 20th Century. Arthur Conan Doyle. Dorothy L Sayers.

Agatha Christie’s Greatest Mystery

Agatha Christie was a British crime writer best remembered for her detective novels. Her greatest mystery, however, is a personal one…

On 3rd Dec., around 9.45pm, without warning, she drove away from her Berkshire home, having first gone upstairs to kiss her sleeping daughter. Her abandoned car was later found down a slope near Guildford. There was no sign of her.

For 11 days the country buzzed with conjecture about the disappearance. All the elements of a classic Christie story were there. The Silent Pool, a natural spring near the accident scene, for instance, was said to be the site of the death of a young girl and her brother and many thought the novelist had drowned herself there. Others suggested the incident was a publicity stunt, while, more chillingly, some clues seemed to point in the direction of murder at the hands of her unfaithful husband.

Even the celebrated crime writers Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Dorothy L Sayers were drawn into the puzzle. Conan Doyle, who was interested in the occult, took a discarded glove of Christie’s to a medium, while Sayers visited the scene of the disappearance.

Christie was eventually discovered safe, but in circumstances that raised more questions than they answered. Alone, and using an assumed name, she had been living in a hotel in Harrogate since the day after her disappearance, even though news of her case had reached as far as the front page of the New York Times.

The two most popular theories offered for these strange events have been that either Christie was suffering from memory loss after a car crash, or that she had planned the whole thing to thwart her husband’s plans to spend a weekend with his mistress at a house close to where she abandoned her car. [Source]

April 25, 2012 with 17 notes
        tags: Cottlingley. Cottlingley Fairies. Fairies. Fairy. Arthur Conan Doyle. Hoax. History. 1900s.
Cottlingley Fairy.

Cottlingley Fairy.

February 27, 2012 with 7 notes
        tags: Arthur Conan Doyle. England. Fairies. Fantasy. History. Magic. SHOPPED!.
The Cottingley Fairies. The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, 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 10. 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. Conan 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, but others believed they had been faked. Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls grew up, married and lived abroad for a time. 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 UK. 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 continued to claim that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.

The Cottingley Fairies.

The Cottingley Fairies appear in a series of five photographs taken by Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, 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 10. 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. Conan 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, but others believed they had been faked.

Interest in the Cottingley Fairies gradually declined after 1921. Both girls grew up, married and lived abroad for a time. 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 UK. 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 continued to claim that the fifth and final photograph was genuine.

Centennial Theme by One by Four Studio. Powered by Tumblr.