Norma Farber was a poet steeped in both New England and Old World tradition. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, on 6 August 1909 to G. Augustus and Augusta Schon Holzman, Farber began writing poetry in grammar school. She was educated at the Girls' Latin School in Boston where she was the class poet and matriculated at Wellesley College. On 3 July 1928, at age eighteen, she married recent Harvard Medical School graduate Sidney Farber. She finished her undergraduate work at Wellesley in 1931 and took a master's degree in comparative literature at Radcliffe in 1932; she also studied with poet Robert Hillyer of Harvard. She had four children: Ellen, Stephen, Thomas, and Miriam.

As a child, Farber was encouraged to develop her natural talents, and as an adult she continually strove to increase her artistic awareness and range. Trained as a concert singer, she performed in the United States and abroad, receiving a "premier prix...