Barry Moser was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1940. He was educated at Auburn University, the University of Chattanooga, and the University of Massachusetts. His work is represented in The National Gallery of Art, Washington, The Metropolitan Museum, The British Museum, The Victoria & Albert Museum, The Pierpont  Morgan Library, The Vatican Library, and The Israel Museum, to name a few. He has exhibited internationally, and is a member of the Society of Printers, Boston, an Honorary Member of The Society of Wood Engravers (London), and an Academician of the National Academy of Design. In addition to being an illustrator, he is also a printer, painter, printmaker, designer, author, essayist, and teacher. He has served on the faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design; was the 1995 Whitney J. Oates Fellow in Humanities at Princeton University; was artist and writer in residence at Vassar College in 1998. He is currently Irwin and Pauline Alper Glass Professor of Art and the Printer to the College at Smith College. He was the Elliott lecturer at the International Festival of Authors in Toronto in the fall of 2000 and the Third Flannery O’Connor Memorial Lecturer, Georgia State College, Milledgeville, Georgia in 2001.

The books Moser has illustrated and/or designed forms a list of over 350 titles including MOBY DICK, FRANKENSTEIN, and THE DIVINE COMEDY. Moser’s edition of ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND won a National Book Award in 1983. He has received numerous citations and awards from Communication Arts Magazine, Bookbuilders West, The American Association of University Presses, The American Institute of Graphic Arts. He won the prestigious Umhoefer Prize for Achievement in the Humanities from the Arts and Humanities Foundation in 2006. His work on the monumental Pennyroyal Caxton Bible was the only one-man exhibit ever to be mounted at the Library of National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. by a living artist.