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

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.

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 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)

References

  1. 1 2 3 Jenkins, Lyndsey (2020). "Ellis [née Lees], Edith Mary Oldham (1861–1916), writer, lecturer, and socialist". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. doi:10.1093/odnb/9780198614128.013.90000369546. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 24 June 2021.
  2. Doan, Laura; Garrity, Jane (2006). Sapphic Modernities: Sexuality, Women, and National Culture. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 184. ISBN 9781403984425.
  3. Pettis, Ruth. "Ellis, Havelock". glbtq.com. Archived from the original on 27 March 2014. Retrieved 11 June 2008.
  4. Ellis 1898.
  5. Wallace, Jo-Ann (2006). "Edith Ellis, Sapphic Idealism, and The Lover's Calendar (1912)". In Garrity, Jane; Doan, Laura (eds.). Sapphic Modernities: Sexuality, Women and National Culture. Palgrave Macmillan. p. 186. ISBN 9781403984425.
  6. Simkin, John (n.d.). "Havelock Ellis". Spartacus Educational. Retrieved 24 July 2018.
  7. Ellis 1918.

Further reading

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