Frederic William Farrar was born on August 7, 1831, in Bombay, India.

He was a cleric of the Church of England (Anglican), schoolteacher, comparative philologist, and author. He was 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 became a master at Harrow School and, the headmaster of Marlborough College (1871-1876). Farrar spent much of his career associated with Westminster Abbey. He was successively a canon there, rector of St Margaret's (the church next door), and archdeacon of the Abbey. Since 1895, he served as Dean of Canterbury. He was an eloquent preacher and a voluminous author. He published over fifty books, including his well-known "Life of Christ" (1874), translated into many languages and "Life of St. Paul" (1879). In 1866, he was elected to the Royal Society for his philological work. He applied Charles Darwin's ideas of branching descent to the relationships between languages, engaging in a protracted debate with the anti-Darwinian linguist Max Müller. In April 1882, he was one of ten pallbearers at the funeral of Charles Darwin in Westminster Abbey.

In 1860, he married Lucy Mary Cardew (1841–1921). He died on March 22, 1903, in Canterbury, England.