Leonore Davidoff

Leonore Davidoff (31 January 1932 – 19 October 2014) was an American-born feminist historian and sociologist who pioneered new approaches to women's history and gender relations, including through her analysis of the gendered division of roles in public and private spheres. She helped create the Feminist Library in London in 1975. For much of her academic career, Davidoff was based at the University of Essex in the UK, and was a professor emerita when she died.

Early life Leonore Davidoff was born in New York City, United States, in 1932, as the second of four children of Ida and Leo M. Davidoff. Her upbringing in this white Protestant community in Connecticut served as an "early lesson in marginality". When Lockwood moved to the University of Essex in 1968, as a professor in sociology, Davidoff began working there as a research officer. She became a lecturer in social history in 1975 and taught the UK's first MA in women's history.

David Lockwood died a few months before Davidoff, in June 2014. She was survived by her three sons, Ben, Matthew and Harold, and their families.

Selected publications The Best Circles: Society, Etiquette and the Season (1973) With Westover, B. Our Work, Our Lives, Our Words: Women’s History and Women’s Work (Totowa, New Jersey: Barnes and Noble Books, 1986) With Hall, Catherine. Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class 1780-1850 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987) Worlds Between: Historical Perspectives on Gender & Class (1995) With Doolittle, Megan, Janet Fink and Katherine Holden. The Family Story: Blood, Contract and Intimacy (London and New York: Longman, 1999) Thicker Than Water: Siblings and Their Relations 1780-1920 (2012)