Studies in the Psychology of Sex; Sexual Inversion.

Philadelphia:: F.A. Davis, 1908., 1908. 8vo. xi, [1], 272 pp. Index. Brown cloth; joint cracked, rubbed. Ownership signature of Maurice Tweedie; USC Medical Library. Good. Second edition. ?In 1897 Havelock Ellis published Sexual Inversion, the first of his six volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex. The book was first serious study of homosexuality published in Britain. It was based partly as a result of his awareness of the homosexuality of his wife and friends such as Edward Carpenter. Ellis admitted in his autobiography: ?Homosexuality was an aspect of sex which up to a few years before had interested me less than any, and I had known very little about it. But during those few years I had become interested in it. Partly I had found that some of my most highly esteemed friends were more or less homosexual (like Edward Carpenter, not to mention Edith).? According to a letter he wrote to Arthur Symonds, Edith Lees Ellis promised to 'supply cases of inversion (homosexuality) in women from among her own friends.? / Phyllis Grosskurth ?has argued: 'sexual Inversion was an unprecedented book. Never before had homosexuality been treated so soberly, so comprehensively, so sympathetically. To read it today is to read the voice of common sense and compassion; to read it then was, for the great majority, to be affronted by a deliberate incitement to vice of the most degrading kind. . . . That such sexual proclivity is not determined by suggestion, accident, or historical conditioning is apparent, he argues, from the fact that it is widespread among animals and that there is abundant evidence of its prevalence among various nations at all periods of history.?? - [spartacus-educational[dot]com].