Papers of Eric Roll

'A History of Economic Thought' was published in 1938. This small collection consists of a draft annotated typescript, along with notes by one of his students which were found inside the typescript.

Eric Roll (1907-2005), Baron Roll of Ipsden, was born Erich Roll in 1907 in Nowosielitza, Austria. He was Professor of Economics and Commerce in the University College of Hull between 1935 and 1939. After growing up in Austria, Eric Roll completed his PhD at Birmingham University, his thesis becoming his first published book. In 1930, Roll took a teaching post at the new University College of Hull and five years later he became Professor of Economics and Commerce. Within his first few weeks at Hull he met Freda Taylor and they married in 1934. In the course of the 1930s he produced two successful textbooks and also wrote his most famous book, A History of Economic Thought (1938), dashing off the first draft in six weeks. From the late 1940s, he embarked upon a second career as a public servant with the British Food Mission in Washington and he was the British representative in the Paris discussions on Marshall Aid. He enjoyed a distinguished career as a civil servant, negotiator and banker and was made a life peer as Baron Roll of Ipsden, of Ipsden in the County of Oxfordshire, in 1977. He died in England in 2005. He was survived by his two daughters.

See Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry for Eric Roll.

Access will be granted to any accredited reader

Donated by Patricia Shields, Virginia Water, 9 January 2003

Hull University Archives:

Lady Freda Roll, 1928-1993 (Eric Roll's wife) [U DX253]