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Writer and folklorist William Bottrell was born near St. Levan, a few miles from Land’s End in Cornwall, England. He was educated at Penzance Grammar School until 1831 and later at Bodmin School. His grandmother told him traditional Cornish stories from a young age and was a great influence on his future writings. These stories had been handed down for generations.

Bottrell traveled extensively and bought some land in the Basque region of Spain, where he gathered more traditional folk tales. The land was later confiscated and he returned, ruined, to Cornwall. He settled on a smallholding near Lelant where he gathered more stories from the tin miners of the area. He recounted these tales to Robert Hunt, who used them in his own publications. Bottrell was encouraged by the editor of the Cornish Telegraph to write and publish the tales himself and the first of these writings appeared in that newspaper in 1867. He also wrote for the periodicals One and All and the Reliquary.

Bottrell’s tales tell of giants, mermaids, witches, and Cornish fairies such as buccas, knockers, and spriggans (apparently he had a black cat named Spriggans). The tales were compiled into three volumes, the first of which was Traditions and Hearthside Stories of West Cornwall vol. I (1870); the second volume was published in 1873, and the third, Stories and Folklore of West Cornwall, in 1880.