RUTH ASHBY is a children’s book editor, teacher, and writer. Born in Huntington, New York, she studied English literature at Yale University, the University of Michigan, and the University of Virginia, where she served on the executive committee of the Women’s Studies Program and taught courses on women in literature. She was the co-editor and writer of Herstory: Women Who Changed the World and the writer of Elizabethan England both of which won the Notable Trade Books in the Field of Social Studies Award, given by the National Council of Social Studies and the Children’s Book Council. She has written numerous nonfiction history books for children and young adults including Around the World in 1800, The Victorian Age and the six-volume The Civil War Chronicles.