‘I’ve always been funny – but I’ve just realised other people like it’ says former Dundee University worker as she releases debut novel

“Well behaved women seldom make history.”

The well-worn quote, now often found adorning department store shoe sections and the ladies rooms of bars that were trendy in 2016, has been attributed to Marilyn Monroe, Gloria Steinem, and even Anne Boleyn.

But it was coined, in fact, by academic scholar Laurel Thatcher Ulrich in the 1970s – though at the time, she wasn’t well-known enough to be given the credit.

It’s a tale as old as time; women being erased from their own stories.

And it’s a narrative that Edinburgh-born author Hannah Dolby is railing against in her debut historical novel, No Life For A Lady, which is tipped to be one of the best books of 2023 by Cosmopolitan.

A Victorian novel with a comedic twist, it follows the distinctly badly-behaved Violet Hamilton as she attempts to solve the mystery around her missing mother’s disappearance, while batting off her well-intentioned father’s endless line of suitors.

“Violet’s definitely not your conventional Victorian lady!” laughs Dolby.

And part of the delight in writing her, she explains, was using her 21st Century privileges to give voice to the Victorian women who went largely unheard.

“Certainly from the Victorian era, we didn’t always hear women’s stories as they should be told,” she explains, citing her “most underrated” Victorian read as Lady Audley’s Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon – which, unsurprisingly, stars its own shady lady in a corset.

“In Victorian literature, you very much hear the story of a woman either as she felt she could tell it, or as men told it.

“I reckon women then were the same as they are now, with the same wants and wishes and desires, but you don’t really get to see inside their heads.

“So what I’ve kind of tried to do in the book is really clamber inside Violet’s head and work out what she was thinking.”

The result is a heroine who is not only feisty, but funny, too.

‘A lot to laugh at in Victorian era’

So funny, in fact, that former Dundee University press officer Dolby was shortlisted for the 2021 Comedy Women In Print prize.

But like many British women, she had never really embraced her innate sense of humour as something special – until it came to writing a novel.

“I think often, women use humour to ease tension and make life happier for everyone in the room,” the author observes. “It’s an unconscious skill that women are quite good at.

“I think I’ve always been funny – but I’ve only just realised that other people quite like my sense of humour!

Because it's Friday… https://t.co/N2QMOynOON

— Hannah Dolby (@LadyDolby) February 24, 2023

“After all, there is also a lot to laugh at in the Victorian era. Like there’s the fact that women were supposed to stay ‘innocent’ until their wedding nights, that kind of thing.

“Once I got going, the comedy aspect of it is what made me able to keep writing.”

As for the writing itself, like many debut novelists, Dolby credits lockdown with giving her the time and space to brave the blank page.

Author turned down trapeze artist ‘audition’

Having spent 30 years in the world of PR and marketing for high-profile employers such as National Museum of Scotland (where she looked after Dolly the Sheep’s exhibition), Buckingham Palace and the Royal Horticultural Society, she considers her life to have been “about gathering stories”.

“I turned down a chance to be a trapeze artist when I was 17,” she throws in as we discuss work and life, as if to demonstrate. “I worked at the circus on the Meadows in Edinburgh and was offered the chance to ‘audition’.

“But the audition was in the guy’s caravan,” she grimaces, “so I politely declined.”

It appears that moment at 17 is when the story-gathering began.

Then at 50, with no commute to make due to Covid restrictions, she sat down and wrote this one – set in Hastings, where, she reveals, she studied journalism at university.

And since it’s her first of a two-book deal with publisher Head of Zeus, will Violet be making a reappearance?

“It is a linked book,” Dolby says coyly. “That’s all I’ll say for now.”

No Life For A Lady by Hannah Dolby, published by Head of Zeus, is available now from most bookstores. RRP £16.99.