Eve Palmer

Background

Palmer was born in the Karoo Desert of South Africa to Clifford George Palmer - a rancher - and Kate (née Uglig) Palmer.

Education

Palmer studied journalism at the University College, London and received a Diploma in Journalism in 1937.

Career

Her best known work is her bestselling 1966 non-fiction book The Plains of the Camdeboo. After graduating, Palmer toured the United States. Among her stops was the Grand Coulee Dam which she wrote about for the Capetown News.

Palmer also reported for The Rhodesia Herald and Pretoria News.

She then edited the earliest issues of the Veldtrust, a conservationist magazine and the official publication of the National Veld Trust. After the war Palmer met fellow journalist and future novelist Geoffrey Jenkins when they both reported for The Rhodesia Herald.

They have a son named David. Her best known work remains The Plains of Camdeboo, which she published in 1966.

lieutenant is about Cranemere farm where five generations of her family have lived.

The book traces the region"s history from "dinosaurs and early hominids to trekkers and sheep farmers", lieutenant is also "an account of her life at Cranemere, the Palmer family"s vast ranch in a South African desert, and the struggle to tame the land." Journalist Justin Fox describes the book as "an evocative piece of writing that captures the essence of the Camdeboo." The book was an almost instant bestseller and remains in print. Palmer wrote numerous botanical works. Jeanette Eve has said that Palmer "could write with a novelist"s gift for narrative and a poet"s gift for lyricism.

As a botanist, she could also write with a scientist"s gift for accuracy. recreations of the landscapes of her early home are among the finest in Karoo literature."

Palmer and Jenkins lived in Pretoria for many decades.

Palmer died in 1998.

Achievements

• 1978: the South African Botanical Society honoured her with the Bolus Medal for her "outstanding" works on indigenous trees 1986: the Recht Malan Prize, for The South African Herbal.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Plains of Camdeboo

    (For four generations the author's family have lived on th...)

  • A Field Guide to the Trees of Southern Africa (Revised Second Edition)
  • The Plain of Camdeboo by Eve Palmer

    (VG condition book with dust jacket. DJ is clean, has mino...)

  • Plains of Camdeboo
  • The Plains of Camdeboo. Illus. by John Pimlott
  • THE PLAINS OF CAMDEBOO,THE BIOGRAPHY OF A STRANGE & BEAUTIFUL AFRICAN DESERT

Membership

Palmer was a member of the Royal Society of South Africa, National Veld Trust, Botanical Society of South Africa, Wild Life Society, Royal Horticultural Society, and the Rose Society.