Hallie Rubenhold

Hallie Rubenhold is a British historian and author whose work uncovers the hidden lives of women written out of history. She studied History at the University of Leeds and Birkbeck, University of London, and has appeared on numerous television documentaries. She is a social historian specialising in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women's lives. Rubenhold's breakthrough book The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper won the Baillie Gifford Prize and was a number one Sunday Times bestseller. The book was revolutionary in its refusal to focus on the murderer, instead telling the stories of the five women as individuals with complex lives, challenging the assumption that they were all sex workers and restoring their humanity. The Covent Garden Ladies explores the world of eighteenth-century London's sex trade through the famous Harris's List directory. Her work consistently gives voice to women whom history has silenced or reduced to footnotes. Her audiobooks and books offer listeners and readers history that restores women to the centre of their own stories — scholarship that is both rigorous and deeply compassionate.