My review of Staging Fairyland: Folklore, Children’s Entertainment and Nineteenth-Century Pantomime by Jennifer Schacker has just been published in Folklore, the journal of the Folklore Society. The book explores the portrayal of fairies in Victorian theatre (and pantomime in particular), assessing the influence of stage fairies on the development of folklore and popular perceptions of fairies, as well as the folkloric sources of stage fairies. Stage fairies occupy an important intermediate place between the fairies of folklore and the fairies of modern cinema and generic popular culture, and as such this is an interesting and illuminating study.
Francis Young 