Acclaimed biography of the pioneering advocate of free love, gay rights and women’s suffrage

Challenging both capitalism and the values of Western civilization, the gay socialist writer Edward Carpenter had an extraordinary impact on the cultural and political landscape of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A mystic advocate of, among other causes, free love, recycling, nudism, women’s suffrage and prison reform, Carpenter’s work anticipated the sexual revolution of the 1960s and placed him at the epicenter of the literary culture of his day.

Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this major new biography situates Carpenter’s life and thought in relation to the social, aesthetic and intellectual movements of his day, and explores his friendships with figures such as Walt Whitman, Robert Graves, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, Isadora Duncan and Emma Goldman. Edward Carpenter paints a compelling portrait of a man described by contemporaries as a “weather-vane” for his times.

Praise for Edward Carpenter: A Life of Liberty and Love

“Exhaustively researched and resonant in detail. It is a splendid reassessment of a man who was both typical of his own time and light years ahead of it.” — Fiona MacCarthy, Guardian

“One of the best political biographies for many years. It is not just a book about the past; it’s bursting with ideas that remain relevant to the future of humanity.” — Peter Tatchell, Observer Books of the Year

“A powerful and entertaining biography of the ‘sexy sage of Sheffield’ … This absorbing book opens the whole period of early socialism in Britain. And it reads beautifully.” — Jeanette Winterson, The Times

“Immensely valuable.” — Colm Tóibín, London Review of Books

“Magnificent … definitive.” — Tristram Hunt, Observer

“I devoured these 550 pages in a day, longing for more.” — Richard Canning, Independent

Sheila Rowbotham is Professor of Gender and Labour History at the University of Manchester, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. Her many books include A Century of Women: The History of Women in Britain and the United States in the Twentieth Century and Promise of a Dream: Remembering the Sixties. She has written for, among other newspapers, the Guardian, The Times, the Independent, New Statesman, and the New York Times.