Eileen Power: the eminent medievalist and economic historian

An eminent medievalist and economic historian, Eileen Power as she was born, Eileen Postan as she became, was a pioneer of vibrant economic and social history and one of the first to develop the study of the previously neglected field of women’s history. She would go on to campaign for the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies.

Eileen Edna Le Poer Power was born on 9th January, 1889, at Parkdale, Dunham Massey, the oldest of three daughters of a London stockbroker, Philip Ernest le Poer Power, and Mabel Grindley Clegg.

Parkdale, which later became home to the Vegetarian Society, dates back to around 1870, is of the grand persuasion, and lies between Altrincham and Dunham Massey Hall and Park to the west.

Eileen's sister, Rhoda (1890-1957), was a children’s writer and broadcaster, while their younger sister, Beryl (1891-1974), was a civil servant. When Eileen was just three, her father was arrested for fraud and imprisoned, and the family moved south to Bournemouth to live with her grandfather, Benson Clegg. Her mother died from TB in 1903.

Girton College, Cambridge, photomechanical print, c.1890-1900. Eileen Power graduated with a First in History in 1910. The college had been established in 1869 as Cambridge's first women's college (author Detroit Publishing Co./Photoglob, Eileen and her sisters moved to Oxford, to take up residence with an aunt. She was educated in Oxford and then at Girton College, Cambridge (1907-10) where she obtained a first in history. Friendships forged during her Cambridge years, with, for example, Margaret Garrett, the niece of Millicent Garrett Fawcett, the leader of the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies (NUWSS), would take her into suffrage politics. In 1910, when aged 21, she was awarded the Gilchrist Research Fellowship, enabling her to study at the Sorbonne (the University of Paris) and the École des Chartres (1910-11), following this with the Shaw Studentship at the London School of Economics (LSE) between 1911-13. She was not the first member of her family to achieve academic excellence as she was a granddaughter of the Irish-born Reverend Philip Bennett Power (1822-99), a graduate of Trinity College, Dublin and prolific writer of theological tomes

Eileen Power became director of studies in history at Girton (1913-20), and then lecturer in political science/economic history back at the LSE between 1921-24, and Reader at the same institution (1924-31). While at LSE, she would mentor the Canadian-born economic historian Eleanora Mary Carus-Wilson (1897-1977). In 1920, she became the first woman awarded the Albert Kahn travelling scholarship, named after the French banker and philanthropist (1860-1940) who was best known for his Archives of the Planet (1908-31), a 22-year project to photograph human cultures worldwide.

The scholarship enabled the lucky recipient to spend a year travelling, ‘free from all professional pursuits’. Eileen would journey through China, India and Japan and it was China that particularly resonated and a place she would return to several times. All this occurred despite the Albert Khan scholarship panel’s initial concerns that selecting a woman could end in disaster as she might (and I quote) ‘commit matrimony’. She completed her task earnestly, producing her report on her venture in 1921.

From 1922 until her death in 1940, she lived on the outskirts of Bloomsbury at a time when the Bloomsbury Group of writers, that loose collection of artists, philosophers and all-round intellectuals was prominent.

Her most famous work came out in 1924, Medieval People, while in 1927 she founded The Economic History Review, a peer-reviewed history journal that is still published quarterly on behalf of the Economic History Society. At the same time, she was editing The Broadway Travellers (1926-31) with Edward Denison Ross (1871-1940), a linguist and Orientalist. This was a series of reprints and translations of 26 of the most notable travel books available at the time, drawn from different countries and eras.

Eileen Power pictured in April 1926 (Auguste Leon, collections.albert-kahn.hauts-de-seine.fr) In 1931, Eileen became only the second woman to be appointed to the chair of economic history at LSE, succeeding Lilian Knowles, an acknowledgement of her contribution to the advancement of social and economic history, her proven abilities as a teacher, and her strong reputation as a social and economic historian. She would continue in post until her death while returning to Girton to give courses of lectures in the summer. In 1933, she joined forces with William Beveridge (1879-1963), the Liberal politician and economist who was to become famous for the Beveridge Report (1942), which served as the basis for the post-war welfare state. Published at the height of the war, it was a vision of Britain’s hopes for the future. 1933, however, was also the year that Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and Beveridge and Eileen Power set up the Academic Freedom Committee, an organisation that would help academics flee Nazi Germany.

She was made a corresponding fellow of the Medieval Academy of America (1936) and awarded a D.Litt (Doctor of Literature or Letters) from Mount Holyoke College (1937), a historically women’s college in Massachusetts founded as a female seminary 100 years earlier. In the same year, she married historian Michael Postan (1899-1981), a Bessarabian-born historian and former student of hers, who became professor of history at Cambridge. She had previously been engaged to Reginald Johnston (1874-1938), the Scottish diplomat and colonial official who was the tutor/advisor of Puyi (1906-67), the final Emperor of China; his book, Twilight in the Forbidden City (1934) was used as source material for the film The Last Emperor’ (1987).

Eileen died suddenly of heart failure on 8th August 1940 in London aged just 51. Her work, The Wool Trade in Medieval History, was published posthumously the following year, while her magnum opus, Medieval People, was reissued in 1975 with Michael Postan publishing some of her essays. In the decade of her death a ‘Power Feast’, as it was called, was endowed at Girton College in her memory – an opportunity for some of the world’s most eminent historians to gather in acknowledgement of Eileen Power's considerable contribution to historical scholarship; it is still celebrated today. As recently as 2017 she was featured in the conference, London’s Women Historians, held at the Institute of Historical Research, showing her legacy and influence live on well over 130 years after her birth in Dunham Massey. She had been a bright, lively and colourful character who had a mastery of prose in its most lucid form. Tall and elegant, she cut a distinguished figure, with a witty countenance that endeared her to many. A traveller, a dancer, she had many strings to her bow, and combined grace with graft.

The Sorbonne (University of Paris) where Eileen Power studied after being awarded a scholarship Image:. Getty CHRONOLOGY