Powell was born September 3, 1906 in Washington, D.C. of
Quaker parents, G. Harold and Gertrude (Clark) Powell. His father was a general manager of the
Sunkist Cooperative, and the family spent Powell's early winters in
Riverside. He received a B.A. from
Occidental College in 1928. According to his obituary in the
Los Angeles Times, "During the Depression, he worked as a shipping clerk at
Vroman's Bookstore in Pasadena and for Fowler Books in Los Angeles and local rare bookstores until Los Angeles City Librarian
Althea Hester Warren, in Powell's words, 'plucked me out of
Jake Zeitlin's bookshop and sent me off to Berkeley.' " Powell later returned to Los Angeles to work for Warren at the
Central Library in downtown Los Angeles. He earned a doctorate from the
University of Burgundy in
Dijon (
Université de Bourgogne) in 1932 (having written his
dissertation on
Robinson Jeffers He was University Librarian at the
UCLA Library from 1944 to 1961, and head librarian of the
William Andrews Clark Memorial Library from 1944 until 1966. He was the first dean of the School of Library Service at
UCLA, which later merged to become the
Graduate School of Education and Information Studies. He was also a lecturer in English at UCLA and a visiting professor at the
Columbia University School of Library Service. Powell was a
Guggenheim Fellow in Great Britain in 1950–51. After retiring from UCLA in 1966, Powell moved to
Tucson, Arizona in 1971, where—as Professor in Residence for nearly two decades—he was instrumental in the growth of the
University of Arizona Graduate School of Library Science, now known as the
University of Arizona School of Information Resources and Library Science. The
University of Arizona Libraries special collections holds Powell's papers documenting his time in Tucson, and the Fay and Lawrence Clark Powell Endowment for Southwest Research continues to support Powell's interest in the
geography of the southwest United States. The Lawrence Clark Powell Memorial Lecture is held in Tucson annually in Powell's honor, with noted authors speaking about topics relevant to Powell's work, and Lifetime Achievement awards have been granted at the Memorial Lecture in prior years. Powell was a president of the
Bibliographical Society of America, the
California Library Association, and the
Zamorano Club of Los Angeles, and also a member of the
Roxburghe Club of Los Angeles, the
Caxton Club of Chicago, and the
Grolier Club of New York. In 1981 he was awarded
American Library Association Honorary Membership. He died at La Rosa Health Center in Tucson, Arizona at age 94. His wife, née Fay Ellen Shoemaker, died around 1991. The couple had two sons, one named Norman. ==Literary friendships==