Cicely Hilda Farmer

Cicely Hilda Farmer (1870 – 7 May 1955) was a New Zealand-born British novelist and travel writer.

She was born in One Tree Hill, Auckland in 1870, the daughter of James and Julie Farmer.

Warington Baden-Powell, founder of the Sea Scouts, came ashore in New Zealand when his father Prof Rev Baden Powell died, and retrained there as a lawyer specialising in maritime law. Her wedding dress of white silk satin, made by Reville and Rossiter of Hanover Square, is in the permanent collection of the V&A in London. After the wedding they retired to an artistic commune at the Château Royal de Collioure in Collioure in the French Pyrenees close to the Spanish border, where he was a keen viticulturist.

In 1939, by deed poll, she renounced the surname Monier-Williams and was henceforth Cicely Hilda Baden-Powell again. At the time, her address was Milden House, Dixwell Road, Folkestone, Kent.

Publications Novels The Painted Show, 1924 Waters of Fayle, 1925 The Bending Sickle, William Morrow, New York, 1931 Anna, Faber and Faber, London, 1931 Artemis Weds, William Morrow, New York, 1932, dust jacket by Paul Wenck.

Non-fiction Sunrise Over India, Victor Gollancz, 1914 (reprinted 1934) Dragons and a Bell, 1931 (about a trip through China, Malaysia, Burma, and Sri Lanka)