Havelock Ellis

Henry Havelock Ellis (1859-1939) was a British physician and writer best known as a pioneering figure in the scientific study of human sexuality, but his 1890 book The Criminal, revised through several editions into the twentieth century, also made him an early English-language contributor to criminal anthropology, the study of physical and psychological differences between criminals and non-criminals associated above all with Cesare Lombroso. In The Criminal, Ellis surveyed and critically engaged with continental criminological theories of his era, helping introduce Lombroso's ideas and the broader positivist school of criminology to English-speaking readers while tempering the harder biological determinism of some of his continental contemporaries. Ellis's wider scholarly career, including his multi-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex, situates his criminological writing within a broader project of applying emerging scientific methods to previously moralized areas of human behavior.