Life

She was born as a fraternal twin in Westerham

Westerham

Westerham is a town and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, in South East England with 5,000 people. The parish is south of the North Downs, ten miles west of Sevenoaks. It covers 5800 acres . It is recorded as early as the 9th century, and was mentioned in the Domesday Book in a...

, Kent, on 14 June 1939 to Hugh Robert MacDonald (died May 26, 2004) and Penelope Boothby Farmer. After attending a boarding school, she read history at St Anne's College, Oxford and did postgraduate work at Bedford College, University of London.

Information about Farmer's personal life seems to be sparse, but in a blog dating back to 2004, she writes that she is living in Lanzarote

Lanzarote

Lanzarote , a Spanish island, is the easternmost of the autonomous Canary Islands, in the Atlantic Ocean, approximately 125 km off the coast of Africa and 1,000 km from the Iberian Peninsula. Covering 845.9 km2, it stands as the fourth largest of the islands...

 on the Canary Islands

Canary Islands

The Canary Islands , also known as the Canaries , is a Spanish archipelago located just off the northwest coast of mainland Africa, 100 km west of the border between Morocco and the Western Sahara. The Canaries are a Spanish autonomous community and an outermost region of the European Union...

, with "my beloved," apparently a newish partner. She there describes herself as "a writer - published for many years, now struggling," and lists "her grandchildren" among those she loves and misses. Other relations are mentioned: the departure of her daughter and a granddaughter (23 April 2004), and on the following day, she comments, "Look at the past war-filled century. Even you young are children of the twentieth century to some extent, could, may have had lost grandparents at least. My ninety-odd year old father, child of almost all of it, weeps still for brothers killed in the first war, friends in the second, tears rolling down his cheeks. Weeps too, as I do, for women lost to our family lurgy - breast cancer - my mother aged fifty three when I was twenty three, my twin sister aged fifty one when I was.. oh work it out." She also alludes to an "Ozzie younger sister" (May 28, 2004) and a "politically deplorable elder brother" (18 June 2004). The 22 April 2010 entry states that her son was among those staying with her, with his daughters aged eight and twelve.

Writings

Her 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

Carnegie Medal

The Carnegie Medal is a literary award established in 1936 in honour of Scottish philanthropist Andrew Carnegie and given annually to an outstanding book for children and young adults. It is awarded by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals...

 commendation and was cited as an American Library Association Notable Book. The Summer Birds was soon followed by its sequels, Emma in Winter and Charlotte Sometimes, 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

Margery Fisher

Margery Lilian Edith Fisher 1913–1992 was a British literary critic.She was internationally renowned for her influence in promoting the importance of good literature for children. This came about through her books, world lecture tours and her own notable journal Growing Point...

's comments on the book. She had a similar realization, this time on her own, while writing Charlotte Sometimes.