 Sybella Mary Crawley-Boevey was born in 1851 at Flaxley Abbey, Gloucestershire, the youngest daughter of Sir Martin Hyde Crawley-Boevey, 4th Baronet.She is the sister of author and civil servant Arthur William Crawley Boevey and the cousin of famous Victorian author Charlotte Mary Yonge.In 1888, Crawley-Boevey wrote Dene Forest Sketches (1888), a study about the Forest of Dean where her father was the verderer.