The Task of Social Hygiene (Dodo Press) Book

Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), known as Havelock Ellis, was a British doctor, a sexual psychologist and a social reformer. His father was a sea captain, and in 1875 he left London on his father's ship for Australia, and soon after his arrival in Sydney obtained a position as a master at a private school. He returned to England in April 1879 and decided to take up the study of sex. He studied medicine at St Thomas' Hospital, although he never had a regular medical practice; he joined The Fellowship of the New Life in 1883, meeting other social reformers Edward Carpenter and George Bernard Shaw. In November, 1891 at the age of 32, he married the English writer and proponent of women's rights, Edith Lees. Their "open marriage" was the central subject in Ellis's autobiography, My Life. His book Sexual Inversion (1897), was the first English medical text book on homosexuality, co-authored with John Addington Symonds. Other psychologically important concepts developed by Ellis include autoerotism and narcissism. He was a supporter of eugenics which he wrote about in The Task of Social Hygiene (1912).Read More