Pauline Diana Baynes was an English illustrator, author, and commercial artist known for her significant contributions to children's literature. Over her prolific career, she produced drawings and paintings for more than 200 books. Pauline Baynes was best recognized for her work with distinguished authors such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, becoming the first illustrator of some of Tolkien's minor works and Lewis's famed Chronicles of Narnia.

Her career began with only a modest amount of formal training. After living in India, where her father served as commissioner in Agra, she moved to England for education. Following her father's retirement, the family settled near Farnham in Surrey. It was Pauline's exceptional talent that catapulted her into the limelight as J.R.R. Tolkien's chosen illustrator. Her distinctive drawings appear in works like Farmer Giles of Ham, The Adventures of Tom Bombadil, Smith of Wootton Major, Tree and Leaf, and posthumously in the poem Bilbo's Last Song.