author
F. E. (Fanny Emily) Penny
d. 1939
A prolific British novelist who drew deeply on her years in India, she filled her fiction with Anglo-Indian settings, social tensions, and local detail. Her books helped bring late Victorian and Edwardian readers into the everyday worlds of the British Raj.
1 Audiobook
The Outcaste
by F. E. (Fanny Emily) Penny
About the author
Born in Suffolk in 1847, Fanny Emily Farr later became known to readers as F. E. Penny. She married the Rev. Frank Penny in 1877, and the couple moved to Madras, where she spent many years in India.
That long experience shaped her writing. She produced dozens of novels, most of them set in India, and also wrote nonfiction works on Indian life and places. Her stories often explore encounters between British and Indian society, which gives them both a strong sense of setting and a glimpse into the attitudes of her time.
Penny died in 1939. Today she is mainly remembered for her Anglo-Indian fiction, including novels such as The Outcaste and A Mixed Marriage, which continue to interest readers of imperial, historical, and popular fiction.