Cicely Mary Barker Flower Fairies of the Spring

First published in 1923, "Flower Fairies of the Spring" is the first in a series of "Flower Fairy" books by English illustrator and author, Cicely Mary Barker. Barker trained at the Croydon School of Art starting at age 13 and began her professional career drawing and painting for greeting cards and children's magazines. A gifted artist in water colors, oils, pastels, as well as pen and ink, Barker was inspired by the popularity of fairies in the early twentieth-century to create her most famous and enduring work, "Flower Fairies of the Spring". Exquisitely rendered and charmingly detailed, the book is a collection of twenty-four poems and paintings depicting flowers and their guardian fairies. Barker's work is an amazing combination of both realism and fantasy as she studied and worked hard to make her drawings and paintings as close to the natural world as possible. Barker combined her impressive artistic talent with a lively and playful world of magic and imagination.