Havelock Ellis

Henry Havelock Ellis, known as Havelock Ellis (1859–1939) was a British sexologist, author in 1897 of the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality.

Ellis was born in Croydon, the son of a sea captain. and attended schools in Wimbledon and Mitcham. At the age of 16 he accompanied his father to Australia, and worked from some time there as a schoolmaster. He returned to England in 1879 and studied at St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, but never had a regular medical practice. In 1883 he joined "The Fellowship of the New Life" where he met Edward Carpenter and other social reformers.

His book Sexual Inversion, co-authored with John Addington Symonds was published in German in 1896, and in English in 1897. It is the first medical textbook on homosexuality, and is considered the first objective study of homosexuality, as he did not categorise it as immoral, criminal, or a disease. In 1897 a bookseller was prosecuted for stocking the book.

Ellis is sometimes said to have originated the word "homosexual" but denied responsibility for it, describing it as "a barbarously hybrid word" (since it is a mixture of Greek and Latin roots). His preferred expression "sexual invert" may have influenced Radcliffe Hall who used this phrase about herself.

Ellis also studied transgender phenomena, for which he coined the term "eonism", and was among the first to distinguish this from homosexuality.

It has been claimed that Ellis was gay. He certainly seems to have had little interest in straight sex. He says that his friends were much amused at his being considered an expert on sex. He was a virgin at the time of his marriage in 1891, and suffered from impotence until the age of 60. His wife Edith Lees is known to have been lesbian, and they had an "open marriage".