Susanna Hoe's first book of 18 was a political novel published in 1971. Since 1991 she has specialised in non-fiction women's history, starting with The Private Life of Old Hong Kong: Western Women in the British Colony (1841-1941), published during a 10 year stay while her late husband, Derek Roebuck, set up a new Law School. There, too, she taught confidence-building English to Chinese housewives as part of a burgeoning women's movement, and contributed 'Letters from Hong Kong' to the Liverpool Post and Echo, later published as Watching the Flag Come Down, An Englishwoman in Hong Kong 1987-1997. 

 

 Before Hong Kong, the couple spent 5 years in Papua New Guinea where, having started a degree as a mature student at the London School of Economics in Russian Government History and Language, she completed it in Pacific History. As a result of that stay she published At Home in Paradise: A House and Garden in Papua New Guinea.

 

 In 1997 they settled in Oxford; her first book published there was Women at the Siege: Peking 1900. More recently she has published 6 volumes in the series 'Of Islands and Women' with the subtitle 'Women, History, Books and Places' - Madeira, Crete, Tasmania, Malta, Sardinia and last, but not least, The Isle of Wight (2024).