Mary Wesley

Mary Wesley, CBE (24 June 1912 – 30 December 2002) was an English novelist. During her career, she was one of Britain's most successful novelists, selling three million copies of her books, including 10 bestsellers in the last 20 years of her life.

Mary Aline Mynors Farmar was born in Englefield Green, Surrey, the third child of Colonel Harold Mynors Farmer and his wife Violet née Dalby. As a child, she had 16 governesses. When she asked her mother why they kept on leaving, her mother reportedly told her: "Because none of them like you, darling."

She had three sons. Her first husband was Carol Swinfen Eady (the 2nd Baron Swinfen) with whom she had a son Roger Mynors Swinfen Eady, 3rd Baron Swinfen. She had an affair with the Czech war hero Heinz Otto Ziegler, with whom she had Toby Eady, who became the literary agent of her biographer Patrick Marnham. She then had a son, William Siepmann, with her second husband, Eric Siepmann. Wesley became an author late in life, after Siepmann's death in 1970 left her nearly impoverished.

Wesley had a lifelong complicated relationship with her family and especially with her mother, who had a sharp tongue. Following the death of her father in 1961, her mother said: "I'm not going to let that lingering death happen to me. When the time comes I'm going to crawl to the Solent and swim out." Wesley replied with feeling: "I'll help you".

Her family did not approve of her books. Her brother called what she wrote "filth" and her sister, with whom she was no longer on speaking terms, strongly objected to The Camomile Lawn, claiming that some of the characters were based on their parents. Wesley identified the appalling grandparents in Harnessing Peacocks, who bully the pregnant Hebe, as the nearest she came to a portrait of her own parents in old age.

She wrote three children's books, Speaking Terms and The Sixth Seal (both 1969) and Haphazard House (1983), before publishing adult fiction. Since her first adult novel was published only in 1983, when she was 71, she may be regarded as a late bloomer. The publication of Jumping the Queue in 1983 was the beginning of an intensely creative period of Wesley's life. From 1982 to 1991, she wrote and delivered seven novels. While she aged from 70 to 79 she still showed the focus and drive of a young person.

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