Havelock Ellis (born 1859-1939) was a British doctor, sexual psychologist and Fabian.

He studied medicine at St Thomas' Hospital and joined the Fabian Society in 1883. He was interested in sexual liberation and wrote the seven volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex between 1897 and 1928. Until 1935 this work was only legally available to the medical profession.

His Sexual Inversion described the sexual relations of homosexual men, something that Ellis did not consider to be a disease or a crime. A bookseller was prosecuted in 1896 for stocking it.

Ellis was a supporter of Eugenics which he wrote about in The Task of Social Hygiene.

Eventually, it seems evident, a general system, whether private or public, whereby all personal facts, biological and mental, normal and morbid, are duly and systematically registered, must become inevitable if we are to have a real guide as to those persons who are most fit, or most unfit to carry on the race.

Bibliography

  • The New Spirit (1890)
  • Man and Woman (1894)
  • Sexual Inversion (1897)
  • Sex in Relation to Society 1910
  • The Problem of Race-Regeneration 1911
  • The Task of Social Hygiene (1912)
  • The Erotic Rights of Women (1918)
  • On Life and Sex: Essays of Love and Virtue (1921)
  • My Confessional (1934)
  • My Life (1940)

External Link