Brian Lewis, “George Cecil Ives and the Transformation of Discourses on Sexuality”

The British writer, reformer, and criminologist George Cecil Ives lived through a transformation in our collective understanding of sexuality. Born in 1867, Ives found early inspiration in the Classical tradition and witnessed the rise of sexology and psychoanalysis before his death in the mid-twentieth century. But Ives did not simply observe these social changes; he chronicled them exhaustively through his published works, correspondence, scrapbooks, and a three-million-word diary. Brian Lewis (NHC Fellow, 2022–23) has analyzed these records to help us to understand how individuals actually experienced these philosophical and social shifts.