Havelock Ellis

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Havelock Ellis bigraphy, stories - British Sexologist

Havelock Ellis : biography

02 February 2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939

Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis (2 February 1859 – 8 July 1939), was a British physician, writer, and social reformer who studied human sexuality. He was co-author of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and also published works on a variety of sexual practices and inclinations, including transgender psychology. He is credited with introducing the notions of narcissism and autoeroticism, later adopted by psychoanalysis. He served as president of the Galton Institute and, like many intellectuals of his era, supported eugenics , p. 412

Eugenics

The Task of Social Hygiene

Ellis resigned from his position of Fellow of the Eugenics Society over their stance on sterilization in January 1931. , p. 242.

Marriage

In November 1891, at the age of 32, and reportedly still a virgin, Ellis married the English writer and proponent of women’s rights, Edith Lees. From the beginning, their marriage was unconventional, as Edith Lees was openly lesbian. At the end of the honeymoon, Ellis went back to his bachelor rooms in Paddington. She lived at Fellowship House. Their "open marriage" was the central subject in Ellis’s autobiography, My Life.

According to Ellis in My Life, his friends were much amused at his being considered an expert on sex. Some knew that he suffered from impotence until the age of 60. He then discovered that he could become aroused by the sight of a woman urinating. Ellis named this "undinism." After his wife, Edith Lees, died, Ellis formed a relationship with a French woman called Françoise Lafitte who may have indulged him.

Early life and teaching career

Ellis, son of Edward Peppen Ellis and Susannah Mary Wheatley, was born in Croydon, then a small town south of London. He had four sisters, none of whom married. His father was a sea captain, his mother the daughter of a sea captain, and many other relatives lived on or near the sea. At seven years of age, his father took him on one of his voyages, during which they called at Sydney, Callao and Antwerp. After his return, Ellis attended the French and German College near Wimbledon, and afterward attended a school in Mitcham.

In April 1875, Ellis sailed on his father’s ship for Australia; soon after his arrival in Sydney, he obtained a position as a master at a private school. After the discovery of his lack of training, he was fired and became a tutor for a family living a few miles from Carcoar. He spent a year there and then obtained a position as a master at a grammar school in Grafton. The headmaster had died and Ellis carried on the school for that year, but was unsuccessful.

At the end of the year, he returned to Sydney and, after three months’ training, was given charge of two government part-time elementary schools, one at Sparkes Creek, near Scone, New South Wales and the other at Junction Creek. He lived at the school house on Sparkes Creek for a year. He wrote in his autobiography, "In Australia, I gained health of body, I attained peace of soul, my life task was revealed to me, I was able to decide on a professional vocation, I became an artist in literature . . . these five points covered the whole activity of my life in the world. Some of them I should doubtless have reached without the aid of the Australian environment, scarcely all, and most of them I could never have achieved so completely if chance had not cast me into the solitude of the Liverpool Range." , p. 139

Works

  • The Criminal (1890)
  • The New Spirit (1890)
  • The Nationalisation of Health (1892)
  • Man and Woman: A Study of Secondary and Tertiary Sexual Characteristics (1894) (revised 1929)
  • translator: Germinal (by Zola) (1895) (reissued 1933)
  • Sexual Inversion (1897) (with J.A. Symonds)
  • Affirmations (1898)
  • The Evolution of Modesty, The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity, Auto-Erotism (1900)
  • The Nineteenth Century (1900)
  • Analysis of the Sexual Impulse, Love and Pain, The Sexual Impulse in Women (1903)
  • A Study of British Genius (1904)
  • Sexual Selection in Man (1905)
  • Erotic Symbolism, The Mechanism of Detumescence, The Psychic State in Pregnancy (1906)
  • The Soul of Spain (1908)
  • Sex in Relation to Society (1910)
  • The Problem of Race-Regeneration (1911)
  • The World of Dreams (1911)
  • The Task of Social Hygiene (1912)
  • Impressions and Comments (1914–1924) (3 vols.)
  • Essays in War-Time (1916)
  • The Philosophy of Conflict (1919)
  • On Life and Sex: Essays of Love and Virtue (1921)
  • Kanga Creek: An Australian Idyll (1922)http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300801.txt
  • Little Essays of Love and Virtue (1922)
  • The Dance of Life (1923)http://www.gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0300671.txt
  • Sonnets, with Folk Songs from the Spanish (1925)
  • Eonism and Other Supplementary Studies (1928)
  • The Art of Life (1929) (selected and arranged by Mrs. S. Herbert)
  • More Essays of Love and Virtue (1931)
  • ed.: James Hinton: Life in Nature (1931)
  • Views and Reviews (1932) at www.gutenberg.net.au
  • Psychology of Sex (1933)
  • ed.: Imaginary Conversations and Poems: A Selection, by Walter Savage Landor (1933)
  • Chapman (1934)
  • My Confessional (1934)
  • Questions of Our Day (1934)
  • From Rousseau to Proust (1935)
  • Selected Essays (1936)
  • Poems (1937) (selected by John Gawsworth; pseudonym of T. Fytton Armstrong)
  • Love and Marriage (1938) (with others)
  • My Life (1939)
  • Sex Compatibility in Marriage (1939)
  • From Marlowe to Shaw (1950) (ed. by J. Gawsworth)
  • The Genius of Europe (1950)
  • Sex and Marriage (1951) (ed. by J. Gawsworth)
  • The Unpublished Letters of Havelock Ellis to Joseph Ishill (1954)