Frederic William Farrar was a cleric of the Church of England.
Farrar was born in Bombay, India and educated at King William's College on the Isle of Man, King's College London and Trinity College, Cambridge. At Cambridge he won the Chancellor's Gold Medal for poetry in 1852. He was for some years a master at Harrow School and, from 1871 to 1876, the headmaster of Marlborough College.
Farrar became successively a canon of Westminster and rector of St Margaret's, Westminster, archdeacon of Westminster Abbey and the Dean of Canterbury. He was an eloquent preacher and a voluminous author, his writings including stories of school life, such as Eric, or, Little by Little and St. Winifred's about life in a boys' boarding school in late Victorian England, and two historical romances.
Farrar's religious writings included Life of Christ, which had great popularity, and Life of St. Paul. His works were translated into many languages, especially Life of Christ.
Farrar was a believer in universal reconciliation and thought that all people would eventually be saved, a view he promoted in a series of 1877 sermons. He originated the term "abominable fancy" for the longstanding Christian idea that the eternal punishment of the damned would entertain the saved. Farrar published Eternal Hope in 1878 and Mercy and Judgment in 1881, both of which defend Christian universalism at length.