Jane Robinson (born 1959) is a British social historian specialising in women's history. She has published on female pioneers in a range of fields including education, travel, and the professions, and on other women's social history topics including suffrage, illegitimacy, and the

Women's Institute The Women's Institute (WI) is a community-based organization for women in the United Kingdom, Canada, South Africa and New Zealand. The movement was founded in Stoney Creek, Ontario, Canada, by Erland and Janet Lee with Adelaide Hoodless being the ...

Life

She was born in

Edinburgh Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 Council areas of Scotland, council areas. The city is located in southeast Scotland and is bounded to the north by the Firth of Forth and to the south by the Pentland Hills. Edinburgh ...

, educated at Easingwold School and

Somerville College, Oxford Somerville College is a Colleges of the University of Oxford, constituent college of the University of Oxford in England. It was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. It began admitting men in 1994. The colle ...

, worked in the antiquarian book trade for 10 years and now lives near Oxford writing and lecturing.

Research and writings

In 1994, she published an anthology of women travellers' writings, ''Unsuitable for Ladies''. Her 2002 work ''Pandora's Daughters'' (''Women Out of Bounds'' in the United States) discussed "Enterprising women" including early French writer

Christine de Pizan Christine de Pizan or Pisan (, ; born Cristina da Pizzano; September 1364 – ), was an Italian-born French court writer for King Charles VI of France and several French royal dukes, in both prose and poetry. Christine de Pizan served as a cour ...

, criminal Moll Cutpurse, and Christian Cavanagh who joined the army in male disguise. In 2005 she wrote ''Mary Seacole'', a biography of the nurse who was in 2004 voted "the top black Briton of all time", and her 2009 book ''Bluestockings'' describes women's entry into English universities from the 1860s to 1939, and was the

BBC Radio 4 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. The station replaced the BBC Home Service on 30 September 1967 and broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasti ...

Book of the Week ''Book of the Week'' is a long-running BBC Radio 4 series, first broadcast in 1998. It features daily readings from an abridged version of a selected book read over five or occasionally ten weekday episodes. Each episode is approximately 15 min ...

''. In 2011 Robinson published ''A Force to be Reckoned With'', a history of the

; she says in the introduction that "the WI members I've come across - past as well as present - have had more humour, courage, spirit, eccentricity and common sense than any other individuals I've ever written about. And that's saying something." In 2015 she published ''In the Family Way: Illegitimacy Between the Great War and the Swinging Sixties'', a book on attitudes to illegitimacy, described in ''

The Telegraph ''The Telegraph'', ''Daily Telegraph'', ''Sunday Telegraph'' and other variant names are often names for newspapers. Newspapers with these titles include: Australia * The Telegraph (Adelaide), ''The Telegraph'' (Adelaide), a newspaper in Adelaid ...

'' as "bone-chilling". Her 2018 book ''Hearts And Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote'' tells the story of the

Suffragists Suffrage, political franchise, or simply franchise is the right to vote in public, political elections and referendums (although the term is sometimes used for any right to vote). In some languages, and occasionally in English, the right to v ...

, who campaigned for women's suffrage in Britain separately from the

Suffragettes A suffragette was a member of an activist women's organisation in the early 20th century who, under the banner "Votes for Women", fought for women's suffrage, the right to vote in public elections in the United Kingdom. The term refers in part ...

and marched on London in 1913. Her 2020 book ''Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders - The Pioneering Adventures of the First Professional Women'' explores the lives of pioneering women forging careers in the fields of medicine, law, academia, architecture, engineering and the church in the period following the passing of the Sex Disqualification (Removal) Act of 1919.

References

Publications

*''Wayward Women: a Guide to Women Travellers'' (1990, Oxford UP, ) *''Unsuitable for Ladies: an Anthology of Women Travellers'' (1994, Oxford UP, ) *''Angels of Albion : Women of the Indian Mutiny'' (1996, Viking, ) *''Parrot Pie for Breakfast : an Anthology of Women Pioneers '' (1999, Oxford UP, ) *''Pandora's Daughters: the Secret History of Enterprising Women'' (2002, Constable, ) :*Published in USA as ''Women Out of Bounds: the Secret History of Enterprising Women'' (2003, Carroll & Graf, ) *''Mary Seacole: The Charismatic Black Nurse Who Became a Heroine of the Crimea'' (2005, Constable, ) *''Bluestockings : the Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an Education'' (2009, Viking, ) *''A Force to be Reckoned With: A History of the Women's Institute'' (2011, Virago, ) *''In the Family Way: Illegitimacy Between the Great War and the Swinging Sixties'' (2015, Viking, ) *''Hearts And Minds: The Untold Story of the Great Pilgrimage and How Women Won the Vote'' (2018, Doubleday, ) *''Ladies Can’t Climb Ladders - The Pioneering Adventures of the First Professional Women'' (2020, Doubleday, )

External links

Jane Robinson's website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Robinson, Jane 1959 births Living people British historians British social historians Alumni of Somerville College, Oxford