Havelock Ellis's Biography(Books)(Photos)

Havelock Ellis (1859-1939)

homosexual males, concluding that homosexual
behavior was not a disease or a crime. The

English essayist, psychologist, a pioneer in
establishing a modern, scientific approach to

subsequent volumes of the Studies were
published in the United States by F.A. Davis

the study of sex. Ellis's magnum opus was
Studies in the Psychology of Sex (7 vols.,

1897-1928). until 1935 his work was legally
available only to the medical profession.

appeared in 1928. After the ban was lifted,
Random House produced to general readers a

Ellis became known as a champion of women's
rights and of sex education, but his

four-volume series of the work. The last
years of his life Ellis spent in retirement

autobiography My Life (1939) reveals his
marital problems and unhappiness in his own

near Ipswich, is Suffolk. Ellis died on July
8, 1939 in Hintlesham, Suffolk. Havelock

sexual life.

Ellis's library was purchased by Yale
University in 1941. The FBI also has files on

"All advance in social reform, even when
it involves surgery, is, and always has been,

They slowly win the world to their side. The
law limps behind." (from Questions of Our

Day, 1934)

"Eventually, it seems evident, a general
system, whether private or public, whereby

Henry Havelock Ellis was born in Croydon,
Surrey, as the son of Edward Peppen Ellis, a

all personal facts, biological and mental,
normal and morbid, are duly and

sea captain, and Susannah Mary (Wheatley)
Ellis. He was educated at private schools in

systematically registered, must become
inevitable if we are to have a real guide as

London. At the age of sixteen he made a
voyage to Australia in a ship under his

to those persons who are most fit, or most
unfit to carry on the race. Unless they are

father's command. He worked there as a
teacher in New South Wales, where he

full and frank such records are useless."
Thus Ellis did not condemn Nazi sterilization

underwent an inner transformation. Later
Ellis returned to this experience in the

programmes, because they had scientific
premises and "need not become mixed up in the

they received at Sparke's Creek." After four
years, he returned to England. Ellis entered

Walt Whitman, and Leo Tolstoy. His essays on
French writers were collected under the title

St. Thomas' Hospital, London, where he
studied medicine from 1881 to 1889. However,

From Rousseau to Proust (1935). a new edition
of The Soul of Spain (1908), with an

after qualifying he practiced only for a
short time. In 1891, Ellis married the

introductory essay on the Spanish Civil War,
appeared in 1937. His essays from 1884 to

English writer Edith Lees; he was still a
virgin. From the beginning, their marriage

1932 on literature and art were reprinted in
Views and Reviews (1932). thousands of people

was unconventional - the wedding breakfast
consisted of porridge and at the end of the

wrote Ellis asking him for advice on sexual
matters. His correspondence he utilized in My

honeymoon, Ellis went back to his barchelor
rooms in Paddington. Edith lived at

Confessional (1934), a collection of essays.

Fellowship house. Their stormy relationship
was the central subject in Ellis's

For further reading: Havelock Ellis,
Philosopher of Love by H. Peterson (1928);

autobiography, My Life. None of Ellis's four
sisters ever married. "If men and women are

to understand each other," Ellis once said,
"to enter into each other's nature with

Calder-Marshall (1959); havelock Ellis,
Artist of Life by John Stewart Collis (1959);

mutual sympathy, and to become capable of
genuine comradeship, the foundation must be

The Modernization of Sex: Havelock Ellis,
Alfred Kinsey, William Masters and Virginia

laid in youth."

Johnson by Paul Robinson (1976); havelock
Ellis, Philosopher of Sex by V. Brome (1979);

In 1883 Ellis met the South African writer
Olive Schreiner. He did not aswer to her

Havelock Ellis: a Biography by P. Grosskurth
(1980); 'Ellis, (Henry) Havelock', in World

expectations, but they remained close friends
until her death in 1920. "We were not what

can be technically, or even ordinarily,
called lover," Ellis said later. In On Life

The Pursuit of Serenity: Havelock Ellis and
the New Politics by Chris Nottingham (1999) -

and Sex: Essays of Love and Virtue (1921)
Ellis referred to Schreiner's Woman and

For further information: Henry Havelock Ellis
1859-1939

Labour (1911) and her theory that modern
society produces a tendency to parasitism in

women: "...they no longer exercise the arts
and industries which were theirs in former

of their host." The letters of Schreiner and
Ellis were published in 1992. It has been

Heine, 1887
* ed.: T[homas] Middleton, 1887-1890 (2

speculated that their relationship was
unconsummated. Ellis suffered from impotence

vols)
* ed.: John Ford, 1888

until he was about 60. With the help of a
devoted lover, he finally cured the problem,

* ed.: Nero and Other Plays, 1888 (with
others)

and remained sexually active until he was 72.
"I am regarded as an authority on sex, a fact

* ed: The Pillars of Society, and Other
Plays (by H. Ibsen), 1888

which sometimes amused one or two (though not
all) of my intimate women friends," Ellis

* The Criminal, 1890
* The New Spirit, 1890

wrote in his autobiography.

* The Nationalisation of Health, 1892
* Man and Woman: A Study of Secondary and

During his time as a medical student, Ellis
began writing for magazines, and become a

Tertiary Sexual Characteristics, 1894 (rev.
ed. in 1929)

staff member of the Westminster Review. At
the meetings the Fellowship of the New Life

* Sexual Inversion, 1897 (with J.A.
Symonds)

Ellis met G.B. Shaw (1856-1950) and other
progressive thinkers, but when Shaw was

* Affirmations, 1898
* The Evolution of Modesty, The Phenomena

attracted by Socialism and collective action,
Ellis focused on the problems of individuals.

of Sexual Periodicity, Auto-Erotism, 1900
* The Nineteenth Century, 1900

However, Edward Carpenter's poem Towards
Democracy (1883-1902), about the march of

* Analysis of the Sexual Impulse, Love
and Pain, The Sexual Impulse in Women, 1903

humanity toward socialism, inspired Ellis so
much, that he sent Carpenter a letter, which

* A Study of British Genius, 1904
* Sexual Selection in Man, 1905

started their long friendship. In 1887 he
became editor of the Mermaid Series of

* Erotic Symbolism, The Mechanism of
Detumescence, The Psychic State in Pregnancy,

unexpurgated reprints of Elizabethan and
Jacobean drama. He worked on this project

1906
* The Soul of Spain, 1908

with such writers as Arthur Symons
(1865-1945), a.c. swinburne (1837-1909). his

* Sex in Relation to Society, 1910
* The Problem of Race-Regeneration, 1911

first work of nonfiction, The Criminal
(1890), appeared in the Contemporary Science

* The World of Dreams, 1911
* The Task of Social Hygiene, 1912

Series, which he edited until 1914. In 1894
he published Man and Woman, which was

* Impressions and Comments, 1914-1924 (3
vols.)

translated into many languages. Around the
turn of the century he experimented with the

* Essays in War-Time, 1916
* The Philosophy of Conflict, 1919

hallucinogen mescal, preceding Aldous Huxley
who also studied hallucinogenic substances.

* On Life and Sex: Essays of Love and
Virtue, 1921

Ellis's increasing concern with sexual

* Kanga Creek, 1922
* Little Essays of Love and Virtue, 1922

matters let to Studies in the Psychology of
Sex. It appeared in six volumes from 1897 to

* The Dance of Life, 1923
* translator: Germinal (by Zola), 1924

1910. A seventh volume was published in 1928.
The work explored sexual relations largely

* Sonnets, with Folk Songs from the
Spanish, 1925

from a biological and multicultural
perspective. Especially Ellis was interested

* Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies,
1928

in the typical sexual behavior of humans,
paving way to the surveys of Alfred Kinsey

* The Art of Life, 1929 (selected and
arranged by Mrs. S. Herbert)

and other modern writers on sexual topics. He
objected Freud's application of adult sexual

* More Essays of Love and Virtue, 1931
* ed.: James Hinton: Life in Nature,

terms to infants, and tried to demystify
human sexuality - most of his English readers

1931
* Views and Reviews, 1932

were raised in the asexual, ignorant, and
prejudiced Victorian climate. Masturbation,

* Psychology of Sex, 1933
* ed.: Imaginary Conversations and Poems:

he assured his readers, did not inevitably
lead to serious illness. Ellis himself liked

A Selection, by Walter Savage Landor, 1933
* Chapman, 1934

to watch women urinating. Once he persuaded
his lover Francoise Cyon to do so in Oxford

* My Confessional, 1934
* Questions of Our Day, 1934

Circus. "I think almost all civilized people
are in some way what would be thought

abnormal," said Bertrand Russel in his
Autobiography after reading Ellis's work,

* Poems, 1937 (selected by John
Gawsworth; pseudonym of T. Fytton Armstrong)

"and they suffer because they don't know that
really ever so many people are just like

* Love and Marriage, 1938 (with others)
* My Life, 1939

them."

* Sex Compatibility in Marriage, 1939
* From Marlowe to Shaw, 1950 (ed. by J.

Sexual Inversion was published in Germany in
1896 under the title Das kontrare

Gawsworth)
* The Genius of Europe, 1950

Geschechtsfuhl. When the book appeared in
Britain, George Bedborough, the bookseller,

* Sex and Marriage, 1951 (ed. by J.
Gawsworth)

who had stocked it, was prosecuted, and a
British judge declare the Studies obscene.

* The Unpublished Letters of Havelock
Ellis to Joseph Ishill, 1954

Just a few years earlier Oscar Wilde had been
condemned for the crime of sodomy. In his

* The Letters of Olive Schreiner and
Havelock Ellis, 1992 (ed. by Yaffa Claire