Helen Rappaport

Helen Rappaport
Helen Rappaport in London, c. 2013
Born	Helen Ware 1947 Bromley, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Education	Bachelor of Arts
Alma mater	University of Leeds
Occupation	Author
Children	2 daughters
Website	helenrappaport.com

Helen F. Rappaport (née Ware; born 1947), is a British author and former actress. She specialises in the Victorian era and revolutionary Russia.

Rappaport was born Helen Ware in Bromley, grew up near the River Medway in North Kent and attended Chatham Grammar School for Girls. Her older brother Mike Ware, born 1939, is a photographer, chemist, and writer. She has twin younger brothers, Peter (also a photographer) and Christopher, born in 1953.

She studied Russian at Leeds University where she was involved in the university theatre group and launched her acting career.

After acting with the Leeds University theatre group she appeared in several television series including Crown Court, Love Hurts and The Bill. She later claimed to have spent '20 years in the doldrums as an out of work, broke and miserable actress'...

In the early nineties she became a copy editor for academic publishers Blackwell and OUP. and also contributed to historical and biographical reference works published by for example Cassell and Readers Digest.

She became a full-time writer in 1998, writing three books for US publisher ABC-CLIO including An Encyclopaedia of Women Social Reformers in 2001, with a foreword by Marian Wright Edelman. It won an award in 2002 from the American Library Association as an Outstanding Reference Source and according to the Times Higher Educational Supplement, 'A splendid book, informative and wide-ranging'.