13 Facts About Jane Duncan

Jane Duncan was the pseudonym of Scottish author Elizabeth Jane Cameron, best known for her My Friends series of semi-autobiographical novels.

Jane Duncan wrote four novels under the name of her principal heroine Janet Sandison, and some children's books.

Elizabeth Jane Cameron was born in Renton, West Dunbartonshire on 10 March 1910 and brought up in the Scottish Lowlands.

Jane Duncan's father Duncan Cameron was a police officer in the Vale of Leven, eventually as a sergeant.

Jane Duncan's father brought her up and moved with his job, so Duncan attended Lenzie Academy in the area of Lenzie, East Dunbartonshire, but much of her childhood was spent in the Highlands on the Black Isle in Easter Ross, on her grandparents' croft "The Colony", where her brother John was.

Jane Duncan enlisted as World War II began to serve as a Flight Officer, WAAF alongside the choreographer Frederick Ashton.

Jane Duncan's first posting was the Operations Room then promoted to an officer in Photographic Intelligence, officially at RAF Medenham, but possibly was a part of the top secret Bletchley Park codebreakers.

Jane Duncan then began her career as an author, although the juvenile works she had begun earlier had been burned.

Jane Duncan bought up the nearby ruined old store and the ruined church, as well as taking on Rose Cottage, eventually, and worked in the Cromarty 'Friendly Shop'.

The youngest Ian had learning difficulties and Jane Duncan helped the family accept him as well as assisting financially, so that her sister-in-law could keep all the children together and pay for help with housework.

Jane Duncan later wrote about the Camerons in her children's books.

Jane Duncan was very pro women and pro women fighting as equals in a man's world.

In 1959, Jane Duncan became something of a publishing sensation when Macmillan Publishers announced that it would be publishing seven of her manuscripts, the first to be produced being My Friends the Miss Boyds.