{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}} {{Infobox person | name = Jane Stoddart | image = Jane-t.-stoddart.jpg | caption = by "Lafayette" | other_names = | birth_name = | birth_date = 2 November 1863 | birth_place = Kelso, Scotland | death_date = {{death-date and age|15 December 1944|2 November 1863}} | death_place = Edinburgh, Scotland | death_cause = | education = | occupation = writer, translator, de facto editor | employer = Hodder & Stoughton | known_for = writing | parents = | relatives = | website = | signature = | footnotes = }} '''Jane Thompson Stoddart''' (2 November 1863 – 15 December 1944) was a Scottish journalist and author and ''de facto'' editor of ''The British Weekly,'' "a central force in shaping and promoting the 'Nonconformist conscience'".<ref>{{cite book |title=Dictionary of nineteenth-century journalism in Great Britain and Ireland |date=2009 |publisher=Academia Press |location=Gent |isbn=9789038213408 |page=456 }}</ref>
== Life == thumb|left|29 Horsemarket in Kelso where Jane Stoddart was born Stoddart was born in Kelso in the Scottish Borders in 1863. Her parents were Margaret (born Galloway) and William Stoddart. Her father worked as an assistant to Horatius Bonar.<ref name=jennie/> At the age of thirteen she met Reverend William Robertson Nicoll who had just moved to Kelso from Banffshire to be the new minister. Nicoll was to become her mentor. Meanwhile, she went from school in Kelso where she learned to teach in the part of southern Edinburgh known as Bruntsfield.<ref name="jennie" />
1886 was her first year of having a book published. The story of ''A Door of Hope'' was described in reviews as "thoroughly healthy" and the reviewers included local papers, ''Home and School'' in Toronto and the ''Presbyterian Messenger'' said it was a "Marvellous Book".<ref>{{Cite web|title=(170) - Towns > Dalkeith > 1887-1891, 1894 - Carment's … directory for Dalkeith and district > 1888 - Scottish Directories - National Library of Scotland|url=https://digital.nls.uk/directories/browse/archive/87361615?mode=transcription|access-date=2021-03-11|website=digital.nls.uk}}</ref> In 1877, she wrote her last work of fiction titled ''In Cheviots Glens''.<ref name=bookybuk>{{Cite book|last=Stoddart|first=Jane T.|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=v2UUAAAAQAAJ&q=Jane+T+Stoddart|title=In Cheviots Glens|date=1887|publisher=Oliphant, Anderson, & Ferrier|language=en}}</ref> In 1881, she went to Hanover to learn more German, returning to Britain in 1883 to teach in Clifton. Using her knowledge of German<ref name=jennie/> she translated ''Still Hours'' in 1886 by Richard Rothe<ref name="hathi" /> who was a Lutheran theologian who had died in 1867.
In 1890, she left her teaching job. She had been working with William Robertson Nicoll on a project, but she was now employed as his assistant.<ref name=jennie/> thumb|The British Weekly in 1929 nominally edited by John A Hutton In 1894, she published her second translation which was ''Ruysbroeck and the mystics, with selections from Ruysbroeck,'' by the Nobel Laureate Maurice Maeterlinck.<ref name=":0" /> She was still Nicoll's assistant as his wife died and he remarried. She would write about this in her autobiography which doesn't mention a romance with anyone.<ref name=jennie/> They did work together. Both Nicoll and Stoddart were opposed to the idea of referendums. In 1910, she was the prime author of a pamphlet on the subject before the election in 1910. It sold a large number of copies.<ref name=undum>{{Cite book|last1=Atkinson|first1=Lucy|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=HooIEAAAQBAJ&dq=british+weekly+nicoll&pg=PA63|title=The Referendum in Britain: A History|last2=Blick|first2=Andrew|page=63|last3=Qvortrup|first3=Matt|date=2020-09-21|publisher=Oxford University Press|isbn=978-0-19-882361-2|language=en}}</ref>
In 1923, her mentor died and she would continue to lead on his publication ''The British Weekly''. Formally J. M. E. Ross and later John A Hutton had the job title of editor but she frequently did their job as the de facto editor.<ref name=jennie/>
Stoddart retired in 1937 and she published her autobiography ''Harvest of the Years'' in the following year. She died in Edinburgh in 1944.<ref name=jennie>{{Cite ODNB|title=Stoddart, Jane Thompson (1863–1944), journalist and author|url=https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-53271|access-date=2021-03-11|year=2004|language=en|doi=10.1093/ref:odnb/53271|isbn=978-0-19-861412-8|last1=Matthew|first1=H. C. G.}}</ref>
== Works include == * ''A Door of Hope'', 1876 * ''In Cheviots Glens'', 1877.<ref name="bookybuk" /> * (translation) ''[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/66820 Ruysbroeck and the Mystics], with selections from Ruysbroeck,'' 1894, by Maurice Maeterlinck * (translation) ''Still Hours'', 1886, by Richard Rothe<ref name=hathi/> * [https://archive.org/details/girlhoodofmaryqu00stoduoft/page/n5/mode/2up ''The girlhood of Mary queen of Scots from her landing in France in August 1548 to her departure from France in August 1561'', 1908] * ''The Life of the Empress Eugenie,'' 1906<ref name=hathi/> * ''The New Socialism, an Impartial Inquiry'', 1909 * ''Against the Referendum'', 1910, also by W. Robertson Nicoll<ref name=undum/> * ''The Expositor's Dictionary of Texts, containing Outlines, Expositions and Illustrations of Bible Texts, with full references to the best homiletic literature'', 1911, also by W. Robertson Nicoll and James Moffatt * ''The New Testament in Life and Literature'', 1914<ref name=hathi>{{Cite web|title=Jane T. Stoddart {{!}} The Online Books Page|url=https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/book/lookupname?key=Stoddart,%20Jane%20T.|access-date=2021-03-11|website=onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu}}</ref> * ''[https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/73685 The Case Against Spiritualism]'', 1919 * ''The Christian Year in Human Story,'' 1920 * ''My Harvest of the Years,'' autobiography, 1938<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=My harvest of the years (Library resource)|url=https://eige.europa.eu/library/resource/lse.99140740110302021|access-date=2021-03-11|website=European Institute for Gender Equality|language=en}}</ref>
== References == {{reflist}}
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Stoddart, Jane T.}} Category:1863 births Category:1944 deaths Category:19th-century Scottish educators Category:19th-century Scottish novelists Category:19th-century Scottish women writers Category:20th-century Scottish translators Category:20th-century Scottish women writers Category:20th-century Scottish writers Category:British women journalists Category:People from Kelso, Scottish Borders Category:20th-century Scottish autobiographers Category:Scottish journalists Category:Scottish newspaper editors Category:Scottish women editors Category:19th-century Scottish women educators Category:Scottish women journalists Category:Scottish women autobiographers Category:19th-century British newspaper editors Category:20th-century British newspaper editors