A compelling intellectual biography of Eileen Power, a major British historian who once ranked alongside Tawney, Trevelyan and Toynbee.

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.

List of illustrations
Preface
1. Introduction
2. Family and friends
3. Becoming a historian - Paris, London and Cambridge 1910-1920
4. Travelling East
5. Women, peace and medieval people
6. The LSE, economic history and the social sciences 1921-1940
7. Love, marriage and careers
8. Eileen Power's medieval history
9. World history and the end of the world
10. Clio, a muse
Bibliography.