Away with the fairies

She first took up painting as solace from disease, yet Cicely Mary Barker’s whimsical illustrations—most notably her flower fairies—still hold great appeal 50 years after her death, observes Claire Jackson

- Claire Jackson

IT took a fairy to settle a jovial dispute about our village pub’s new signage. ‘I think that’s a harebell, rather than a bluebell,’ declared one patron, and the matter was cleared by examining the flower’s flared petals, familiar from The Song of the Harebell Fairy, from Cicely Mary Barker’s Flower Fairies of the Summer, in which they chime for fairy feasts and balls.

Barker’s miniature residents of woodlands, hedgerows and flowerbeds appeared in print in 1923 and have since gone on to enjoy a global popularity that might have surprised their modest creator. The daughter of a seed merchant, she originally took up drawing to escape the confines of her childhood bed, to which she had been relegated by severe illnesses, including epilepsy (she credited the Pre-Raphaelites and Kate Green- away among her lifelong sources of inspiration).

Details reflected those seen in the meadows: the primrose fairy has wings modelled on a brimstone

Her father encouraged her, but tragedy soon hit again, when he died suddenly in 1912. Ingenuity saw the family through, with Barker helping out by selling her illustrations. In 1923, she managed to publish her Flower Fairies of the Spring, although it was a muted beginning that hardly hinted at the phenomenal success to come. Two years later came the book that would change her life: Flower Fairies of the Summer.