The Game Is Afoot
When Polly Wright, Elsie's mother, brought the prints to a local meeting of the Theosophical Society, they stirred sufficient interest to be sent to theosophist Edward L. Gardner in London. Gardner was so excited by the prints that he requested the original plates, which he took to Kodak for scientific analysis. The results held that the photographs had not been retouched, which Gardner took as proof that they were real—dismissing the possibility that they were unretouched photographs of a faked scene.Gardner's findings soon came to the attention of Arthur Conan Doyle, famous author and keen spiritualist, as he was working on an article about fairies for The Strand, a popular magazine in which he published his Sherlock Holmes stories. He wrote to the girls expressing his interest and arranged for Gardner to meet them. Arthur Wright stopped expressing his skepticism of the fairies after Conan Doyle's letter arrived, and he made no effort to prevent the girls staging future photos.
The first two fairy photos were published in the December 1920 issue of The Strand as part of Conan Doyle's cover story. The issue was a national sensation and sold out in three days. Elsie and Frances received £20 each. Elsie was also gifted with a better camera by Gardner, with which she and Frances produced three more photographs. In 1922, Conan Doyle published a book, The Coming of the Fairies, which reproduced all five photos and argued strongly for their authenticity.