You might think: another book about fairies? Will you ever have enough?

The answer is “no”, because even if I just look at fairies in Western countries, there’s so much variety that no one book can completely cover the topic. Plus, I don’t have a pretty book about fairies (though I do have that pretty bookazine) so I really, really wanted Faeryland.

As you may expect, Faeryland is an introduction to the world of fairies. The book is divided into twelve sections, covering things like “on faeries”, “faerie courts”, “faerie names”, “household faeries”, “faerie children”, etc. Interspersed between the texts are either original illustrations or historical paintings of fairies (plus the famous Cottingley picture).

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For an introductory book to faery, I thought that the book managed to pack quite a lot of information (what with the faerie courts, faerie medicine, etc) through pictures and stories (The MacDonald fairy flag appears, for example). I especially enjoyed the insertion of many poems about fairies, which I thought made it especially charming.

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Something else that stood out to me were these envelopes that could be found on three pages. You can open these envelopes to take out a fairy invitation, three reproductions of the Cottingley fairy photos, and a booklet on fairy charms and spells.

As you can probably guess, this book focuses more on Faeries in the West. The book does make an attempt fairly early on to include faeries from around the world, but given that it decided that the Japanese fairy was the “oni” (a being which is more popularly translated as “demon” – for example in the popular anime and manga Demon Slayer), I think it’s a good thing that most of the book focused on Western fairies because I wasn’t too sure if I could trust what it said about fairies from other places!

Overall, this is a pretty book that will charm any fan of fairytales. It didn’t really teach me anything new, but I really like the illustrations and pictures and it makes a great addition to my small collection of books on fairy and folklore.