A Woman in History: Eileen Power, 1889-1940

Description

This book tells the fascinating story of the life and work of Eileen Power, a major British historian who once ranked in fame alongside Tawney, Trevelyan and Toynbee. Using letters, diaries and reminiscences, Maxine Berg recreates the life of this charismatic personality, describing, for the first time, Power's remarkable intellectual and scholarly achievements at a time when she was acting very much outside the conventional female role. Her ability, coupled with her vivid writing and pioneer radio broadcasts, made Eileen Power's unique approach to history compelling reading and listening to a whole generation. Dr Berg sets Eileen Power's historical writing in the political and cultural framework of the interwar years, and shows how this early writer of women's and medieval social history helped to create a broad, comparative economic and social history for the succeeding generations.

'This is a brilliant study of a remarkable woman. For those of us who knew Eileen Power it rings true as a sensitive evocation of a fascinating personality. Since Eileen Power touched the life of her generation at many points, this book also illuminates, in fresh and unexpected ways, the history of the social and intellectual life of the first half of the twentieth century. Dr Berg's writing is imbued with the same style and vitality as that of her subject.' Sir John Habakkuk, All Souls College, Oxford 'Eileen Power was one of the great figures in England in the 1920s and 1930s: a pioneer in social and economic history, a gifted teacher at a time when few women had professorships, and an experimental and daring woman. Maxine Berg, herself an outstanding economic historian, has followed in the path opened by Eileen Power. She has explored Powers' papers and publications to create a fascinating portrait of Power and her world.' Natalie Zemon Davis ' ... at once a perceptive biography and an erudite essay in historiography ... ' Martin Pugh, Times Literary Supplement