High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Cicely Mary Barker (28 June 1895 – 16 February 1973) was an English illustrator best known for a series of fantasy illustrations depicting fairies and flowers. Barker`s art education began in girlhood with correspondence courses and instruction at the Croydon School of Art. Her earliest professional work included greeting card and juvenile magazine illustrations, and her first book, Flower Fairies of the Spring, was published in 1923. Similar books were published in the following decades.