Jane Lancaster

I’m a historian by training and a communicator by instinct. In books, articles and talks, I show people that history is all around them.before I earned a PhD in history from Brown University and started publishing books and articles, I was an award-winning high school history teacher, both in the UK and in the USA, persuading students (often successfully) that history was all around them if they knew how and where to look.

What I’ve done in my "eclectic career"

After earning a PhD from Brown in my 40s, I’ve published widely: four books and many articles on women's, local, and Black history, (sometimes including all three at once).

I've taken detours into institutional history, educational history, theater history and military history, and I love women’s diaries!

My previous (and continuing) life

I was an award-winning high school history teacher both in the USA and my native UK.

I’ve traveled the world, including Asia, Africa, South America, Australasia and most of Europe, and lived on three continents.

My inspiration

The curriculum I used back in the UK involved learning how to ask questions of history, rather than relying on history to teach us lessons.

In America, I encouraged my students to do their own research and many won prizes in National History Day, a nationwide competition.

My latest venture

Historical fiction. Poor people don’t leave many records: I’m filling in the gaps.

The first novel is set during the American Revolution, and follows the odyssey of a Black/Indigenous family as they escape enslavement and search for freedom and independence, just like the American Patriots. Later projects spring out of this story, and include a young woman who marries a French officer, moves to Paris and survives the French Revolution, and a desperately poor woman who goes from the workhouse to become one of the richest women in New York.