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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.
She joined the Fellowship of the New Life and she briefly worked with Ramsay MacDonald when they both served as secretaries to the Fellowship. She met Havelock Ellis at a meeting in 1887.
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. Their open marriage was the central subject in Havelock Ellis's autobiography, My Life (1939).
Her first novel, Seaweed: A Cornish Idyll, was published in 1898. Around this time Edith began a relationship with Lily Kirkpatrick, an Irish artist based in St Ives; Kirkpatrick died in June 1903.
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.
(2026). 9781403984425, Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 9781403984425 The couple married in November 1891.
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Categories: 1861 Births, 1916 Deaths, 19th-century English Women Writers, 19th-century English Novelists, 20th-century English Novelists, English Women's Rights Activists, English Feminists, English Non-fiction Writers, Lesbian Feminists, English Lesbian Writers, Victorian Novelists, Members Of The Women Writers' Suffrage League, Writers From Manchester, 20th-century English Women Novelists, Lgbtq People From Manchester
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