Wood was born in New York City on April 12, 1942, as Ellen Meiksins one year after her parents, Latvian Jews active in the Bund, arrived in New York from Europe as political refugees. She was raised in the United States and Europe.
Meiksins Wood's many books and articles were sometimes written in collaboration with her husband, Neal Wood (1922–2003). Her work has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Romanian, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese. Of these, The Retreat from Class received the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1988.[4][verification needed] Wood served on the editorial committee of the British journal New Left Review between 1984 and 1993. From 1997 to 2000, Wood was an editor, along with Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, of Monthly Review, the socialist magazine.
In 1996, she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, a marker of distinguished scholarship.[5] She and Neal Wood divided their time between England and Canada until he died in 2003.[6]
Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism. University of California Press, 1972.
The Retreat from Class: A New 'True' Socialism. Schocken Books, 1986. ISBN 0-8052-7280-1. Verso Classics, January 1999. Reprint with new introduction. ISBN 1-85984-270-4.
The Pristine Culture of Capitalism. Verso, 1992. ISBN 0-86091-572-7.
Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism. Cambridge University Press, 1995. ISBN 0-521-47682-8. Excerpt available here
Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy. Verso, February 20, 1997. ISBN 0-86091-911-0.
The Origin of Capitalism. Monthly Review Press, 1999, 120 pp. ISBN 1-58367-000-9, ISBN 1-58367-007-6. Revised edition: The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View. Verso Books, 2002, 213 pp. ISBN 1-85984-392-1, ISBN 978-1-85984-392-5.
Empire of Capital, Verso, 2003. ISBN 978-1-85984-502-8; paperback : Verso, 2005. ISBN 1-84467-518-1.
Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages. Verso, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84467-243-1.
Liberty & Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Renaissance to Enlightenment. Verso, 2012. ISBN 978-1-84467-752-8.
Co-authored with Neal Woodedit
Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Social Context. Oxford University Press, 1978. ISBN 0195201000
A Trumpet of Sedition: Political Theory and the Rise of Capitalism, 1509-1688. New York University Press, 1997 and London: Pluto Press, 1997. ISBN 0745311768
Co-edited collectionsedit
In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda, ed. with John Bellamy Foster. Monthly Review Press, 1997. ISBN 0853459835
Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution, ed. with Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster. Monthly Review Press, 1998. ISBN 0853459894
Rising from the Ashes? Labor in the Age of "Global" Capitalism, ed. with Peter Meiksins and Michael Yates. Monthly Review Press, 1998. ISBN 0853459398
Publications available onlineedit
"C.B. MacPherson: Liberalism, And The Task Of Socialist Political Theory", The Socialist Register, Vol.15 (1978), pp. 215–240. Critical evaluation of the thought of C. B. Macpherson. [Retrieved April 18, 2010]
"Liberal Democracy And Capitalist Hegemony: A Reply To Leo Panitch On The Task Of Socialist Political Theory", The Socialist Register, Vol. 18 (1981), pp. 169–189. On socialist political theory. [Retrieved April 18, 2010]
"Marxism Without Class Struggle?", The Socialist Register, Vol. 20 (1983), pp. 239–271. [Retrieved April 18, 2010]
"The Uses and Abuses of 'Civil' Society,", The Socialist Register, Vol. 26: The Retreat of the Intellectuals (1990), pp. 60–84. [Retrieved April 18, 2010]
"Ralph Milband, 1924-1994", Radical Philoshopy, issue 68 (Autumn 1994). Homage to Ralph Miliband
"A Chronology of the New Left and its Successors, or: Who's Old-Fashioned Now?", The Socialist Register, Vol. 31: Why Not Capitalism? (1995), pp. 22–49.
"Modernity, Postmodernity, or Capitalism?", Monthly Review (July–August 1996). [Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/ April 18, 2010]
"Issues of class and culture: an interview with Aijaz Ahmad", Monthly Review (October 1996). [Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/ April 18, 2010]
^"York professors named to Royal Society," The York University Gazette, Vol. 27, No. 8 (October 23, 1996) ISSN 1199-5246 [Retrieved April 18, 2010]
^"RSC: The Academies of Arts, Humanities and Sciences of Canada". Archived from the original on December 20, 2016. Retrieved August 19, 2007.
^ ab"Ellen Meiksins Wood, author and third wife of Ed Broadbent, dead at 73". Victoria Times-Colonist. Canadian Press. January 14, 2016. Archived from the original on January 14, 2016. Retrieved January 14, 2016.
^"Remembering Ellen Meiksins Wood". The Broadbent Blog. The Broadbent Institute. January 14, 2016. Retrieved January 14, 2016.
External linksedit
Interviews
"Interview with Ellen Meiksins Wood - Democracy & Capitalism: Friends or Foes?", New Socialist Magazine, Vol. 1, Issue 1, (January–February 1996).
"An interview with Ellen Meiksins Wood", by Christopher Phelps. Monthly Review, Vol. 51, No. 1 (May 1999).
Downloadable radio interview on the origins of capitalism Archived November 12, 2020, at the Wayback Machine.
Book reviews
"Happy Campers" book review of Why Not Socialism? by G.A. Cohen, London Review of Books, Vol. 32, No. 2 (January 28, 2010) [Retrieved April 18, 2010]
"Why It Matters" book review of Hobbes and Republican Liberty, by Quentin Skinner. London Review of Books, Vol. 30, No. 18 (September 25, 2008) [Retrieved April 18, 2010]
Obituaries
Marxism loses a passionate champion Archived August 18, 2021, at the Wayback Machine by Alex Callinicos, Socialist Review, 410 (February 2016).
Remembering Ellen Meiksins Wood by Vivek Chibber, Jacobin (January 2016).
Frances Abele, George Comninel and Peter Meiksins, 'Socialism and democracy: the political engagements of Ellen Meiksins Wood', Studies in Political Economy: A Socialist Review, 97 (2016), 320-36, https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07078552.2016.1249124