Penelope Jane Farmer (born 1939) is an English fiction writer well known for children's fantasy novels. Her best-known novel is '' Charlotte Sometimes'' (1969), a boarding-school story that features a multiple

time slip A time slip is a plot device in fantasy and science fiction in which a person, or group of people, seem to accidentally travel through time by unknown means, or by a means unknown to the character(s). Time slip is one of the main plot devices ...

Life

Farmer was born a

fraternal twin Twins are two offspring produced by the same pregnancy.MedicineNet > Definition of Twin Last Editorial Review: 19 June 2000 Twins can be either ''monozygotic'' ('identical'), meaning that they develop from one zygote, which splits and forms two e ...

Westerham Westerham is a town and civil parishes in England, civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, England. It is located 3.4 miles east of Oxted and 6 miles west of Sevenoaks, adjacent to the Kent border with both Greater London and Surrey. I ...

, Kent, on 14 June 1939, as the third child of Hugh Robert MacDonald (died 26 May 2004) and Penelope Boothby Farmer. Her parents and hospital staff were unaware of her existence until some 25 minutes after the birth of her twin sister Judith. Throughout Farmer's life, twinship has been a defining element in her understanding of her identity. The importance of Farmer's relationship with her twin sister Judith was reflected in her books, having published ''Two, or: The Book of Twins and Doubles'' in 1996, and ''Sisters: An Anthology'' in 1999. The twins have an older brother, Tim, and a younger sister, Sally. After attending a

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. They have existed for many centuries, and now extend acr ...

, she read history at

St Anne's College, Oxford St Anne's College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 and gained full college status in 1959. Originally a women's college, it has admitted men since 1979. ...

and did postgraduate work at

Bedford College, University of London Bedford College was founded in London in 1849 as the first higher education college for education of women, women in the United Kingdom. In 1900, it became a constituent of the University of London. Having played a leading role in the advanceme ...

. She visited South Africa in 1994, talking with people about their views on the election. She later wrote an article about this, published in the ''Index on Censorship''.Farmer, Penelope (1994). 'We just have to wait and see'. Index on Censorship (3), 143-150

/ref> In 2000, Farmer published an article about the challenges facing the Hong Kong Chinese community in the UK.Farmer, Penelope (2000). 'Talking Chinese'. Index on Censorship (3), 178-183

/ref> According to Penelope Farmer's personal blog site, she was in 2012 living on

Lanzarote Lanzarote (, , ) is a Spanish island, the easternmost of the Canary Islands, off the north coast of Africa and from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering , Lanzarote is the fourth-largest of the islands in the archipelago. With 163,230 inhabi ...

in the

Canary Islands The Canary Islands (; ) or Canaries are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean and the southernmost Autonomous communities of Spain, Autonomous Community of Spain. They are located in the northwest of Africa, with the closest point to the cont ...

. She there described herself as "a writer – published for many years, now struggling", and listed "her grandchildren" among those she loved and missed. Other relations were mentioned: the departure of her daughter and a granddaughter (23 April 2004). The 22 April 2010 entry states that her son was among those staying with her, with his daughters aged eight and twelve.

Writing career

Farmer's first publication was ''The China People'', a collection of literary fairy tales for young people, in 1960. One story written for this collection was judged too long to include. This was re-written as the first chapter of her first novel for children, '' The Summer Birds''. In 1963, this received a Carnegie Medal commendation and was cited as an American Library Association Notable Book. ''The Summer Birds'' was soon followed by its sequels, '' Emma in Winter'' (1966) and '' Charlotte Sometimes'' (1969), and by ''A Castle of Bone'' (1972), ''Year King'' (1977), ''Thicker than Water'' (1989), ''Penelope: A Novel'' (1993), and ''Granny and Me'' (1998). Farmer stated that she, while writing ''Emma in Winter'', did not realize that identity was such a predominant theme in the novel until she encountered Margery Fisher's comments on the book. She had a similar realization, this time on her own, while writing ''Charlotte Sometimes''.

Works

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Farmer, Penelope 1939 births English children's writers English fantasy writers Living people People from Westerham Alumni of St Anne's College, Oxford English women children's writers English women science fiction and fantasy writers Alumni of Bedford College, London