Edith Ellis

For other people named Edith Ellis, see Edith Ellis (disambiguation).

Edith Mary Oldham Ellis (née Lees; 9 March 1861 – 14 September 1916) was an English writer and women's rights activist. She was married to the early sexologist Havelock Ellis.

Edith Ellis
Ellis in 1914
Born	Edith Mary Oldham Lees 9 March 1861 Newton, Lancashire, England
Died	(1916-09-14)14 September 1916 (aged 55) Paddington, London, England
Spouse	Havelock Ellis ​ (m. 1891)​

Biography

Edith Lees & Havelock Ellis

Ellis was born on 9 March 1861 in Newton, Lancashire. She was the only child of Samuel Oldham Lees, a landowner, and his wife Mary Laetitia, née Bancroft. She was born prematurely after her mother sustained a head injury during pregnancy and she died when Ellis was an infant. In December 1868, her father married Margaret Ann (Minnie) Faulkner and in time she had a younger half-brother.^[1] She did not get on well with her father or his new wife. She was educated at a convent school in 1873 until her father realised that she was taking a strong interest in the Catholic faith. She was removed from the school and sent to another.^[1]

She joined the Fellowship of the New Life and she briefly worked with Ramsay MacDonald when they both served as secretaries to the Fellowship.^[1] She met Havelock Ellis at a meeting in 1887.^[2] The couple married in November 1891.

From the beginning, their marriage was unconventional; she was openly lesbian^{[citation needed]} and at the end of the honeymoon Ellis went back to his bachelor rooms. She had several affairs with women, which her husband was aware of.^[3] Their open marriage was the central subject in Havelock Ellis's autobiography, My Life (1939).

Lily Kirkpatrick, 1902

Her first novel, Seaweed: A Cornish Idyll, was published in 1898.^[4] Around this time Edith began a relationship with Lily Kirkpatrick,^[5] an Irish artist based in St Ives; Kirkpatrick died in June 1903.^[6]

Plaque dedicated to Ellis and her husband at Golders Green Crematorium

Ellis had a nervous breakdown in March 1916 and died of diabetes that September. She was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium. James Hinton: a Sketch, her biography of surgeon James Hinton, was published posthumously in 1918.^[7]

Works

• Seaweed: A Cornish Idyll. London: University Press. 1898.
• My Cornish Neighbours (1906)
• Kit's Woman (U.S. title: Steve's Woman) (1907)
• The Subjection of Kezia (1908)
• Attainment (1909)
• Three Modern Seers (1910)
• The Imperishable Wing (1911)
• The Lover's Calendar: An Anthology (ed) (1912)
• Love-Acre (1914)
• Love in Danger (1915)
• The Mothers (1915)
• James Hinton: A Sketch. Stanley Paul. 1918.
• The New Horizon in Love and Life (1921)