Background
At the age of twenty-one, Penelope Farmer was contracted for her first collection of short stories, The China People. One story originally intended for this collection proved too long to include. This was rewritten as the first chapter of The Summer Birds (1962), her first book featuring Charlotte and Emma Makepeace. A second book, Emma in Winter, with Emma as the main character followed in 1966. Charlotte Sometimes was first published in 1969 by Harcourt in the US, and by Chatto and Windus in the UK in the same year.
Penelope Farmer arranged many of the incidents in Charlotte Sometimes ahead of time, based upon family experiences. She later wrote that Charlotte and Emma were originally based on her mother and her mother's sister as children, having no parents and "…having to be everything to each other," one being the responsible one, the other being rather difficult. She wrote, "Emma and Charlotte have grown in their own ways and aren't exactly based on my mother and her sister now, but this is where it started." Penelope Farmer's mother, Penelope Boothby, who was "talkative and unconventional", besides being the inspiration for Emma, was also the inspiration for the character of Emily. The boarding school where the story takes place is set near where Penelope Farmer lived in London.
A revised edition of the novel was published in 1985, with a number of changes. While most revisions were minor, the most significant of these is that a few events at the end of the story were removed, including a poignant episode where Charlotte, back in her own time, receives a package from Clare's sister, Emily, as an adult.
The book has been re-issued by The New York Review Children's Collection.
Read more about this topic: Charlotte Sometimes (novel)
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