Edith Ellis

Edith Mary Oldham Ellis née Lees (1861 – 1916) was a British writer and women's rights activist. She was married to the famous sexologist Havelock Ellis. Edith Lees married Havelock Ellis 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 Ellis 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. Her biography of surgeon James Hinton was published posthumously.