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.
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Life
Farmer was born a fraternal twin in Westerham, 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, she read history at St Anne's College, Oxford and did postgraduate work at Bedford College, University of London.
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.
In 2000, Farmer published an article about the challenges facing the Hong Kong Chinese community in the UK.