Cicely Mary Barker was born in 1895 in Croydon, a town near London, England. She suffered from epilepsy as a child and remained physically delicate for most of her life. She was unable to go to school, so she was educated at home and spent much of her time on her own, reading and drawing.
Cecily’s sister Dorothy set up her own kindergarten to earn money for the Barker family.
Cecily would borrow the students for models. “For many years I had an atmosphere of children about me – I never forgot it.”
Barker was also influenced by the huge popular enthusiasm for fairies that had developed in the Victorian England
Published in 1923, Flower Fairies of the Spring was well received by a post-industrial, war-weary public who were charmed by her vision of hope and innocence, which seemed to evoke a less aggressively modern world.
Bibliography
http://www.flowerfairies.com
