author
William Bottrell
1816–1881
Best known for gathering the fireside tales and local legends of West Cornwall, this 19th-century collector helped preserve a rich world of giants, fairies, ghosts, and seafaring lore. His books remain an important doorway into Cornish storytelling and belief.
2 Audiobooks
Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall, Second Series
by William Bottrell
Stories and folk-lore of West Cornwall. Third Series
by William Bottrell
About the author
Born in 1816 at Raftra in St Levan, Cornwall, he is remembered less as a conventional literary figure than as a careful recorder of local tradition. Accounts of his life note that he drew on stories heard in childhood and on tales told by people across West Cornwall, preserving material that might otherwise have disappeared.
He contributed folk material to Robert Hunt's Popular Romances of the West of England and later published his own collections, including Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall and Stories and Folk-Lore of West Cornwall. Those books mix legend, anecdote, dialect, and observation, giving readers a strong sense of place as well as a treasury of Cornish myth.
William Bottrell died in 1881. He is still valued for the way he captured the voice, humor, and imagination of Cornwall's storytelling culture.