Lina Eckenstein

Lina Eckenstein (1857–1931) was an English historian and polymath, born in London to a German father. Largely self-taught, she moved in the circle of Karl Pearson and the Men and Women's Club, and her first major work, Woman under Monasticism (1896), surveyed the convent life and saint-lore of women between 500 and 1500 and remains a founding study in women's history. She later accompanied the Egyptologist Flinders Petrie on excavations in Sinai, which produced A History of Sinai (1921), and wrote Comparative Studies in Nursery Rhymes (1906), tracing children's verses to older ritual and song. She also translated and wrote for children.