Tessa Boase

Tessa Boase is a freelance journalist, author, lecturer and campaigner based in Hastings. She read English at Oxford, and has worked as a commissioning editor for national newspapers as and a freelance feature writer. Today, her focus lies in uncovering the stories of invisible women from the 19th and early 20th-centuries, revealing how they drove industry, propped up society and influenced politics.

She’s the author of three books of social history: The Housekeeper's Tale: The Women Who Really Ran the English Country House (Aurum Press, 2014); Etta Lemon: The Woman Who Saved the Birds (first published as Mrs Pankhurst's Purple Feather, (Aurum, 2018)), and London's Lost Department Stores: A Vanished World of Dazzle and Dreams (Safe Haven Books, 2022).

Tessa is a fellow of the Royal Literary Fund, a member of the Society of Authors, and a lecturer for The Arts Society, the V&A, English Heritage, the National Trust and the RSPB, among others. Since uncovering the feminist origins of the RSPB in her second book, she has been campaigning for public recognition of its female founders with plaques, portraits and a statue.