Jane Shaw was born Jeannie Bell Shaw Patrick in Glasgow on 3rd December 1910, the youngest child of Dr John Patrick and wife Margaret (nee Shaw). She attended the Park School, Glasgow and Glasgow University, graduating in 1932 with an MA Honours degree in English Literature and Languages. After a course of teacher training in London but felt teaching was not for her. After a spell working for the Times Book Club, she returned to Glasgow to work for the publishers Collins, getting on so well with her editor Jocelyn Oliver that when he moved to Nelson, the author Jane Shaw moved too. She had given up work when she married Robert Evans on 10 May 1938. They had two children, Jane and Ian, and it is thanks to them that GGBP are able to publish some of Jane Shaw’s rarer titles.