The Female Convict Research Group is responsible for the book that documents the lives of the women who lived at the female factory.

The book contains 20 authors and was launched last month at Ross.

Research group president James Parker said interest in women's history was not common, but was rising.

"One of our main focuses is to transcribe all the female convict records of Tasmania," Mr Parker said.

"Once you do that you have an enormous store of information."

Mr Parker said of the 70,000 convicts that came through Tasmania 12,000 were women.

He said the transcribing had been occurring for a few years and the Ross book had taken 18 months to write, collate and print.

Mr Parker gave an example of a convict who he wrote about in the book called Mary Egan, 19.

"She was a completely undistinguished person," he said.

"She had gone to Oatlands to work for the jailkeeper (but) she went to bed one morning and they found a strange growth had closed her windpipe."

"She was one of those Irish girls that went through the famine ... there she is in the newspapers because of the strange death she suffered."

He said another woman he wrote about called Jane Smith was an ancestor of Paul Lennon.

"Jane and another girl called Catherine Murphy were convicted in Dublin," he said.

"They both stole watches off two men. I suspect they were in town on a spree and these young girls latched onto them and stole.

"Both went through some of the female factories, (and) went free pretty quickly.

"Both became founding mothers of Australia."