Initially, Duckett was known for writing accessible historical books on the Middle Ages; later, she acquired a reputation as an authority on early medieval saints.
Encouraged by her father to study the classical texts, Duckett worked through her preparatory education in order to attend university.
[3] In 1911 she passed the Classical Tripos examination, and left Europe on another scholarship for PhD work at Bryn Mawr College, where she received her doctorate in 1914.
[3] After retirement in 1949, Duckett remained an active voice in the history of the Early Middle Ages, and retained a prominent position on campus as an emeritus professor.
[1] Eleanor Duckett's academic legacy is her body of work—seventeen full-length volumes, as well as many contributions to scholarly journals and two major encyclopedias.
In 1938, she published Gateway to the Middle Ages, which proved an accessible and popular book and established her reputation as a writer for a general audience.
The Pen & Brush Club, an organization devoted to the arts, celebrated her Anglo-Saxon Saints and Scholars as the most distinguished work of non-fiction of 1947.
In 1964 she gave the Katharine Asher Engel Memorial Lecture at Smith, which was published the following year as Women and Their Letters in the Early Middle Ages.