Eleanora Carus-Wilson

Eleanora Mary Carus-Wilson, FBA (1897 – 1 February 1977) was a British economic historian. Known for her work on rural Medieval textile industries in England, she made significant contributions to the understanding of that technology in the region.

Eleanora Carus-Wilson
Carus-Wilson c. 1960s
Born1897 (1897)
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Died1 February 1977(1977-02-01) (aged 79–80)
EducationBachelor's & master's
Westfield College (1921 & 1926)
Occupations
Parent

Personal life

Carus-Wilson was born in 1897 in Montreal, Canada. Mary Carus-Wilson was her mother.[1] She grew up in London, England[2] and attended St. Paul's Girls' School. She attended Westfield College and graduated in 1921 with a bachelors and 1926 with a master's degree.[2][3] She died on 1 February 1977.[2]

Career

She taught part-time at a boarding school for around 10 years until in 1936 she received a Leverhulme Scholarship so she could focus on research full-time.[2] During World War II, she worked as a civil servant in Colwyn Bay, where she worked for the Ministry of Food.[2][3] After the war, she returned to London to teach at the London School of Economics (LSE).[2] At LSE, she was mentored by economic historian, Eileen Power.[4] In 1948, Carus-Wilson was made a Reader and then went on to become a professor of economic history. She taught at LSE from 1953 until she retired on 1965.[2] She was a Ford's lecturer at Oxford between 1964 and 1965, where she taught English history.[3]

Carus-Wilson also worked on creating a publishing program for the Economic History Society between the years of 1951 and 1967.[5] She was made an Associate Member of the Royal Academy of Belgium in 1961 and a fellow of the British Academy in 1963. She also was given an honorary doctorate in 1968 from Smith College.[2]

Research

Carus-Wilson focused on medieval economic history.[2] During the beginning of WWII, she started publishing her research on the cloth industry in England.[5] Her paper, "An industrial revolution of the thirteenth century," was "widely read," and discussed how medieval textile workers made significant contributions to the technology of textile work in England.[6] Her work led to the "discovery of the importance of rural industry in late-medieval England," according to The Economic History Review.[5] She, along with scholars, Lewis Mumford and Marc Bloch, "captured the imaginations of a younger generation of scholars in the emergent field of the history of technology with their new vision of medieval technological prowess."[7] Carus-Wilson studied 13th century England's textile industry and described a "rapid adoption of waterpowered fulling."[8] Her article used research drawn from primary sources such as royal and ecclesiastical records.[9] Her research showed a type of revolution in technology that was similar to the Industrial Revolution in the amount of change it caused in 13th century England and how quickly it was adopted.[10] In the early 1960s, she contributed 2 chapters on the wool industry to the second volume of the Cambridge Economic History of Europe (1963), which The Economic History Review called "valuable."[11]

Publications
  • Medieval Merchant Venturers (London, 1954) - collected essays, 1929 to 1950.
  • England's Export Trade 1275–1547, with Olive Coleman (Oxford, 1963).

References
  1. "Wilson, Eleanora Mary Carus- (1897–1977), economic historian". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. 2004. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/30905. Retrieved 26 October 2020. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  2. Youings 1977, p. iii.
  3. "Carus-Wilson, Eleanora Mary (1897–1977)". Encyclopedia.com. Retrieved 8 September 2018.
  4. "Eleanora Carus-Wilson". University of London. Archived from the original on 9 September 2018. Retrieved 9 September 2018.
  5. Youings 1977, p. iv.
  6. Lucas, Adam (2006). Wind, Water, Work: Ancient And Medieval Milling Technology. London: Brill. pp. 201–202. ISBN 978-9004146495.
  7. Lucas 2005, pp. 2–3.
  8. Lucas 2005, p. 4.
  9. Lucas 2005, p. 19.
  10. Parsons, Ben (2018). "Trouble at the Mill: Madness, Merrymaking, and Milling". The Chaucer Review. 53 (1): 34. doi:10.5325/chaucerrev.53.1.0003. ISSN 1528-4204. S2CID 158713598 – via Project MUSE.
  11. Lane, Frederic C. (1963). "The Cambridge Economic History: The Medieval Period". The Journal of Economic History. 23 (2): 215–223. doi:10.1017/S0022050700103833. JSTOR 2116438. S2CID 154792405.

Sources
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