ABSTRACT
Eileen Edna le Poer Power, a pioneer in the field of economic and social history and one of the first to develop the study of women’s history, was born in Altrincham, Cheshire, on 9 January 1889, the eldest of three daughters of Mabel Grindley Clegg and Philip Ernest le Poer Power, a London stockbroker. She was among the first in Britain to hold a chair in economic history, having succeeded Lilian Knowles as professor of economic history at the University of London in 1931, a position that she held until her sudden death at the age of fifty-one in August 1940. She was a vivid and ebullient personality, whose lucid prose commended her work to both academic and popular audiences. A tall and elegant figure, with a fine wit, inherited perhaps from her Anglo-Irish ancestors, and a love of dancing and travel, she was introduced to the chancellor of the University of Manchester upon the occasion of the award of an honorary doctorate as one who combined “the graces of the butterfly with the sober industry of the bee” (Tawney [1940]: 94).
