Diane Atkinson was born in the North-East and educated in Cornwall and London, where she completed a PhD on the politics of women's sweated labour. At the Museum of London she worked as a lecturer and curator specialising in women's history. She has an MA from the University of East Anglia in Life-writing. She is the author of Suffragettes in Pictures, Funny Girls: Cartooning for Equality and Love and Dirt: The Marriage of Arthur Munby and Hannah Cullwick, which was published in 2003.