The Vacillations of Poppy Carew

Mary Aline Mynors Farmar was born in Berkshire in 1912. She was the youngest of three children and her father was an army officer, so the family frequently moved. In 1936, she married Lord Swinfen, had two children, and divorced in the early 1940's. During World War II, she fell in love with journalist Eric Siepmann and lived with him for several years before they were married, which caused Mary's parents to cut her out of their will in disapproval. When her husband died, she was broke with a teenage son.

During the late 1960's, she wrote two books, "Speaking Terms" and "The Sixth Seal," but it wasn't until she was in her seventies that her first major novel was published, "Jumping the Queue." Afterwards, she published "Cammomile Lawn" (1984), which is about love and sex in the British upper middle class and was adapted for television, "Harnessing Peacocks" (1986), which is about a young unwed mother who turns to prostitution to pay for her son's education, and "The Vacillations of Peppy Carew" (1986). Wesley's other titles include "A Sensible Life" (1990), "A Dubious Legacy" (1993), "An Imaginative Experience" (1994) and "Part of the Furniture" (1997). She died of natural causes following a long battle with gout on December 30, 2002.

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