About: L. F. Powell

Lawrence Fitzroy Powell (9 August 1881, Oxford – 17 July 1975, Banbury) was an English literary scholar. The son of Harry Powell (1830–1886), a trumpeter who had been wounded in the Charge of the Light Brigade, Powell was educated at a London board school before working in Brasenose College's library from 1893-95. He then worked for the Bodleian Library under E. W. B. Nicholson from 1895 until in 1901 when he joined the group of scholars working on the New English Dictionary under William Craigie. Powell married Ethelwyn Rebecca Steane (1873/4−1941) on 31 July 1909; they had one son. Upon the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, Powell was declared unfit for active service but he joined the Admiralty two years later.