Edith Ellis

Edith Lees & Havelock Ellis

Born in Manchester in 1861, Ellis' mother died when she was young and she was sent to a convent in 1873. She joined the Fellowship of the New Life and met Havelock Ellis in 1887 at a meeting.[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 he 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, 1902

Her first novel, Seaweed: A Cornish Idyll, was published in 1898.[4] During this period Edith began a relationship with Lily, an artist from Ireland who lived in St Ives. Edith was devastated when Lily died from Bright's disease in June 1903.[5]

Ellis had a nervous breakdown in March 1916 and died of diabetes that September. James Hinton: a Sketch, her biography of surgeon James Hinton was published posthumously in 1918.[6]

• 'Seaweed: A Cornish Idyll. London: University Press. 1898.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• 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)
• James Hinton: A Sketch. Stanley Paul. 1918.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
• The New Horizon in Love and Life (1921)

• Grosskurth, Phyllis (1980). Havelock Ellis: a biography. New York: Knopf. ISBN 978-0-394-50150-5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)