Jane Duncan

Jane Duncan (10 March 1910 – 20 October 1976) was the pseudonym of Scottish author Elizabeth Jane Cameron, best known for her My Friends series of semi-autobiographical novels. She also wrote four novels under the name of her principal heroine Janet Sandison, and some children's books.

Biography Elizabeth Jane Cameron was born in Renton, West Dunbartonshire on 10 March 1910 He had a brother, George. Her younger sister, Catherine, had already died when Duncan was 4 years old. The Kirkmichael Trust now sells a booklet about her organised with Millrace Books, with an appreciation by Dr. Fiona Thomson of Leeds Trinity University, and organises tours for visitors.

Writing In 1959, Duncan became something of a publishing sensation when Macmillan Publishers announced that it would be publishing seven of her manuscripts,

The My Friends series is narrated by Janet Sandison (her mother's maiden name) and follows the character's life from the World War I period through to the 1960s, depicting the people she encounters and showing how her crofting upbringing influences her in the society she meets and geographical locations she finds herself in, and was heavily based on her own life.

In the four-novel Jean Robertson sequence (1969–75), notionally written by Sandison (who herself becomes an author), the heroine and part-narrator moves from bleak beginnings in the town of "Lochfoot" (based on Balloch, West Dunbartonshire) to become a house-servant in the interwar period, influencing for good the lives of many around her.

The five-book "Camerons" series for children have a contemporary setting (being inspired by the author's niece and nephews, "The Hungry Generation") and are notable for including the main character young Iain who has learning difficulties (Down Syndrome), one of the first novels to do so .

Reprints To mark the centenary of Jane Duncan's birth, Millrace Books have re-published My Friends the Miss Boyds, launched at Waterstone’s bookshop in Inverness on Thursday 24 June 2010.

Critical attention

Rita Elizabeth Rippetoe has written Reappraising Jane Duncan: Sexuality, Race and Colonialism in the My Friends Novels (2017).