ELLIS, Henry Havelock (1859-1939)

his first name was never used

essayist and sociologist

son of Edward Peppin Ellis and Susannah Mary Wheatley, was born at Croydon, then a small town south of London, on 2 February 1859. His father was a sea-captain, his mother, the daughter of a sea-captain, and many other relatives lived on or near the sea. At seven years of age his father took him on one of his voyages, during which he called at Sydney, Callao and Antwerp. After his return Ellis went to a fairly good school called the French and German College near Wimbledon, and afterwards to a school at Mitcham. In April 1875 he left London on his father's ship for Australia, and soon after his arrival at Sydney obtained a position as a master at a private school. It was discovered that he had had no training for this position and he became a tutor in a private family living a few miles from Carcoar. He spent there a happy year, reading many books, and then obtained a position as a master at the grammar school at Grafton. The headmaster died just as the school was opening and Ellis carried on the school for that year, but was too young and inexperienced to do so successfully. At the end of the year he returned to Sydney and, after three months training, was given charge of two government part-time elementary schools, one at Sparkes Creek and the other at Junction Creek. He lived happily and healthily at the schoolhouse at Sparkes Creek for a year, the most eventful year of his life he was afterwards to call it. "In Australia I gained health of body; I attained peace of soul; my life task was revealed to me; I was able to decide on a professional vocation; I became an artist in literature . . . these five points covered the whole activity of my life in the world. Some of them I should doubtless have reached without the aid of the Australian environment, scarcely all, and most of them I could never have achieved so completely if chance had not cast me into the solitude of the Liverpool Range." (My Life, p. 139).

Ellis returned to England and arrived there in April 1879. He had decided to take up the study of sex and felt his best step must be to qualify as a medical man. He taught at a school for a year to earn some money with which to make a start, and with some help from his people, eventually obtained his licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries in February 1889. He had for five years or more been doing literary work including the general editorship of the Mermaid Series of the works of the old dramatists. His first original book was The New Spirit (1890), which was followed by The Criminal (1890), The Nationalization of Health (1892), Man and Woman (1894), and Sexual Inversion, which afterwards became the second volume of the work by which he is most known, Studies in the Psychology of Sex, which appeared in 1897. The seventh and last volume was published in 1928. Other volumes of importance included Affirmations (1897), A Study of British Genius (1904), Impressions and Comments, three series (1914-24), Kanga Creek: An Australian Idyll, his one essay in fiction, begun in 1885 but not published until 1922, and The Dance of Life (1923). He also wrote much verse, but no volume was published until Sonnets and Folk Songs from the Spanish appeared in 1925. A practically complete list of his books and articles in periodicals up to 1928 will be found in Houston Peterson's Havelock Ellis, Philosopher of Love. His volumes after that date are listed at the end of My Life. Working almost to the end Ellis died on 8 July 1939. He married Edith Lees, also a writer, who died in 1916. There were no children.

Ellis was a man of remarkable and attractive personality who did an enormous amount of writing which gave him an established position as an author and a scientist. His Kanga Creek belongs to Australian literature, and has been called "the most delightful of bush idylls". (H. M. Green, An Outline of Australian Literature, p. 280).

Havelock Ellis, My Life; I. Goldberg, Havelock Ellis, A Biographical and Critical Survey; H. Peterson, Havelock Ellis, Philosopher of Love; The Times, 11 July 1939; Ed. by J. Ishill, Havelock Ellis in Appreciation.