Abstract

In late nineteenth-century England, Henry Havelock Ellis contributed his unconventional points of view to the discourse on a wide variety of topics including sex, crime, women's rights, eugenics, and morality. The thread of Ellis' belief in the spiritual nature of man runs throughout his writings. For Ellis, and contrary to the popular beliefs of the nineteenth-century reign of science, science and mysticism were not mutually exclusive. What made Ellis' viewpoints unconventional was his call for the expansion of the narrow definitions of normal behavior to include a wider array of personal characteristics than was currently accepted by the medical, legal, and moral structures that set the guidelines. ;Ellis' upbringing---his status as the oldest child and only son among four sisters; an independent, self-sufficient, evangelical mother; his early formal education; and his experiences on two ocean voyages with his father---left indelible impressions on Ellis. From an early age, he was an avid reader with a talent for critique. His need to question and use logical reasoning in his search for Truth led him to discard his mother's theology in favor of a personal, rather than institutional, relationship with God. ;Ellis translated Cesare Lombroso's Criminal Man, introducing the Italian School of Criminal Anthropology to an English audience. His own contribution, The Criminal, called for changes in the judicial system that would focus on the individual criminal rather than on the abstract concept of crime. ;Ellis entered the debates on sex with one of the most controversial subjects of the time. The first work in his seven-volume series, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, was Sexual Inversion, a small volume that landed the bookseller in jail for distributing an obscene libel, prompting Ellis to have his remaining work published outside of England. He found his audience in Europe and the United States. In Sexual Inversion , Ellis claimed that inversion was a genetic anomaly among the wide range of homosexual behaviors and, if genetic, inverts should not be subjected to laws that force them to violate their nature. ;Ellis claimed that the social structures of his time, particularly those governing marriage and religion, were detrimental to the life and liberty of individuals, forcing them to live outside of nature rather than as a part of nature, as God intended. Ellis' message to his contemporaries was one of tolerance and understanding---not simply that behaviors outside the narrow margin of acceptability be ignored, but, rather, that they be seen as part of the fabric of normal society