Lucy Jane Rider Meyer (1849-1922) was an American social worker and educator who worked to provide health and social services for the poor, children, and elderly. A graduate of Oberlin College (class of 1872), Lucy attended the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania (1873-1875) in preparation for a career as a medical missionary. She subsequently studied chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1877-78) and was a professor of chemistry at McKendree College in Lebanon, Illinois from 1879 to 1881. As Meyer stated in her introduction, Real Fairy Folks was “true to chemical fact and principle” and represented “an honest effort to make [children] love the beautiful science of Chemistry.”