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Harte, Jeremy: Explore Fairy Traditions (Explore Books). Loughborough: Wymeswold, 2004. 171 p., ill.
It is a pleasure to state at the very outset of this review that the book to be assessed, which is part of the otherwise somewhat uneven 'Explore Books' Series, was chosen by the judges as the winner of the Folklore Society's Katharine Briggs Folklore Award for 2005, in competition with a number of serious contenders for this prestigious annual prize. Despite a few critical comments regarding some of her own work, its selection would undoubtedly have delighted the late Katharine Briggs in whose honour the prize is offered; for, along with her major contributions to folk-narrative research in general, she had a life-long fascination with the subject of fairies, as demonstrated, for example, in such books as The Anatomy of Puck: an examination of fairy beliefs among Shakespeare's contemporaries and successors (1959), The Fairies in Tradition and Literature (1967), A Dictionary of Fairies (1976), and The Vanishing People (1978). It is equally pleasing that this reviewer has no difficulty in applauding the judges' decision, as the book under review is a well-informed, well-researched and nicely balanced account of a topic which, at the hands of some previous writers, has received more provocative and less acceptable treatment.
The author who brings to this book a long-standing interest in 'sacred space and tales of encounters with the supernatural', uses, before discussing the central subject of 'Fairy Tradition' itself, a substantial 'Introduction' (pp. 1-50) to answer some basic questions, such as...