The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls and other Social Supernatural Beings

...fascinating reading... These essays help us to understand the wider context both of human experience of supernatural societies, and those societies themselves, and are a valuable addition to Exeter’s growing catalogue of folklore titles.

-- John Billingsley * Northern Earth *

...essential reading for anyone researching popular belief and supernatural traditions in Europe, regardless of whether they label themselves folklorists, historians, or scholars of religion. 

-- Ethan Doyle White * Reading Religion *

The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls and Other Social Supernatural Beings represents an ambitious enterprise, but the editors have successfully managed to arrange a variety of chapter contributors in a coherent context. At £100 it will not suit the pocket of all enthusiasts. I would suggest it is nonetheless excellent value for money, destined to become a standard comparative text and reference work in its field, indispensable, of its sort, on the theme of the ‘social supernatural’.

-- Stephen Miller * Folklore *

The Exeter Companion to Fairies, Nereids, Trolls and Other Social Supernatural Beings is a rigorously and meticulously edited reference work that brings together top-level specialists. It is, without a doubt, a fundamental contribution to the study of European imaginaries. 

-- Óscar Abenójar * Boletín de Literatura Oral *

It’s not really possible in such a short space to do justice to these enchanting studies. Each contains so much detail, interest and scholarship that my review would have needed to be twice as long... but I hope at least to have provided a hint of the richness of this book.

-- Katherine Langrish * Gramarye *

This volume constitutes an excellent introduction to a particularly vast and complex subject, and almost a veritable handbook that will undoubtedly prove useful for future work on fairy societies.

-- Patrice Lajoye * New Comparative Mythology *

...the consistent focus on sociality means the work offers an excellent starting point for a broad comparative European perspective of this cultural domain and allows researchers to ascertain for themselves key parallels and variations of  traditional beliefs across Europe.

-- Kim McCaul * The Australian Journal of Anthropology *

Simon Young and Davide Ermacora put together this compendium of European folklore through their own insight and the impeccable contributions of sixteen other scholars via fourteen independent studies. All eighteen of them attempt —and, quite frankly, succeed— to weave the supernatural phenomena across Europe and throughout the past two millennia, shedding new light onto the similarities and differences between beings pertaining to legends, stories and myths, and their social nature mirroring human societies.

-- Patricia Rojo Lemos * Amaltea *

The Exeter Companion provides a much-needed methodological blueprint for comparative research and cross-cultural insights. Novices to the field of supernatural being studies should not be daunted by these approachable chapters. However, those with years of experience will find novel insights in these pages. This volume succeeds admirably in its task of “outlining supernatural societies parallel to humans” (140) and will be an excellent addition to a scholarly library.

-- Mary L. Sellers * Marvels & Tal