Born at Guelph, Ontario, Canada, on 14 September 1841, he was the sixth child of Arthur Palmer, archdeacon of Toronto, by his first wife, Hester Madeline Crawford.
[1] In 1857 Palmer went to Cheltenham College in England, where he remained less than a year; the headmaster at the time was Arthur Dobson.
[1] From 1867 to 1880 Palmer was a college tutor, and for some years he captained a team of old university cricketers, the Stoics.
His published works were:[1] Palmer and Louis Claude Purser completed the editorial work for the final volumes of James Henry’s Aeneidea, a detailed commentary on Virgil’s Aeneid, after the death of John Fletcher Davies, the editor originally appointed by Henry’s trustees.
[2] Palmer also worked on Aristophanes, and contributed to the text of the editio princeps of Bacchylides (1897), and first edition of Herondas (1891).