Studies in the Psychology of Sex

Watford: The University Press 1897 and 1900, 1897. Two volumes. 8vo. Volume I. Sexual Inversion. 1897. pp. xviii, 204. Volume II. The Evolution of Modesty; The Phenomena of Sexual Periodicity; Auto-Eroticism. 1900. pp. [viii], viii, [1], 314. Eleven plates of diagrams. Original navy blue cloth, lettered in gilt to the spine. Slight bumping to head and foot of spine, rubbing to corners but overall in very good condition. Contents are in excellent condition. A very good example of this rare and important two volume work on sexual psychology. The publishing history is slightly complex as one would expect for, what was then, a controversial subject. Volume I being offered here is the November 1897 reissue (under the title Studies in the Psychology of Sex) of Sexual Inversion, co-authored with John Addington Symonds. This first edition was almost immediately withdrawn and the November 1897 edtion was published under Ellis's sole name but with the October 1897 preface. Volume II, dated 1900, is the true first edition of this volume. Although it claims to have been published by the University Press at Leipzig, it was in fact the University of London press in Watford which published it together with the second issue of Volume I. Despite these early complications, Ellis's book became the leading work on practices regarded, at the time, as perverted at best, criminal at worst. Sexual Inversion sought, through a serious study of the subject following many interviews, undertaken with Symonds, with gay men, to remove the stigma of degeneracy attaching to homosexuality. In Volume II Ellis coined the term auto-erotism.