Cicely Mary Barker was born in Croydon in 1895 and studied part-time at the Croydon School of Art, although she was mainly educated at home. Her father was an amateur artist and highly supportive of her love of painting. However, following his early death in 1912, she had to help to support the rest of her family through the sale of her poetry and illustrations to magazines and postcard companies.

Her best-known illustrations show fairy children, each dressed to represent a different kind of flower. Her first book, published in 1923, was entitled Flower Fairies of Spring and it is the huge success of this Flower Fairies series that has ensured that the name Cicely Mary Barker is still prominent today. Despite her success, she remained a quiet and modest figure and retained her involvement with the Croydon School of Art, where she began to teach. She spent her later life in Sussex, before her death in 1973.