A review by gloamglozergay
Fairies: A Dangerous History by Richard Sugg

3.0

I haven’t read nonfic in a few years, so I was slow about this one. I felt it was an ok synthesis of a lot of different research, although if you’re looking for something more in-depth, you might just want to pull from the works cited. The author’s voice is engaging, and he makes some very salient observations about the psychology of belief in fairies: fairy folklore largely originated with working-class rural/pre-industrial people who were at the mercy of their environment, particularly nature, and fairies were most commonly invoked to explain things that were uncontrollable, inexplicable, or cosmically unfair, such as early deaths, missing people, or natural disasters. He associates belief in fairies with closeness to nature, endangered by the industrial revolution and our increasing distance from the wilderness. He dedicates a lot of time to the scapegoating of fairies and the related abuse of “changeling” (ie physically or mentally disabled) children, which I appreciated. He does have a tendency to go on tangents - yes, practically any folklore monster could be broadly categorized as fae, and stories about malevolent ghosts have a lot in common with stories about fairies, but that wasn’t exactly what I was looking for here. Some surprising omissions, also: I was rather surprised to get to the “fairies in literature” sections and find no mention of the Child ballads, for instance. Overall an enjoyable read, a little rambly, with useful references to other works.