Dona Ruth Anne Torr was a British historian, marxist and a major influence on the famous Communist Party Historians Group. After her studies at University College London, Torr became a writer and journalist. Horrified by the slaughter of 1914-18, she worked for the Labour Party's newspaper, the Daily Herald, which took an anti-war line, and then the Communist Workers' Life. In 1920 she was a founder member of the Communist Party of Great Britain, while later she worked for the publishing company Lawrence and Wishart.

Aside from her translations of many Marxist classics into English, she is perhaps best known for her unfinished biography of the important labour activist, Tom Mann, Tom Mann and his Times (London, 1956).