Jane Robinson

Who is Jane Robinson?

Jane Robinson is a British social historian specialising in the study of women pioneers in various fields.

She was born in Edinburgh, educated at Easingwold School and Oxford University, worked in the antiquarian book trade for 10 years and now lives near Oxford writing and lecturing.

In 1994, she published an anthology of women travellers' writings, Unsuitable for Ladies. Her 2002 work Pandora's Daughters discussed "Enterprising women" including early Venetian writer Christine de Pizan, 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 Book of the Week.

In 2011 Robinson published A Force to be Reckoned With, a history of the Women's Institute; 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."