Bibliogr. p. 187-192. Index

Edward Carpenter was a prominent figure in the late nineteenth century socialist revival, and his work and example inspired a generation of people in the labour movement. He was also a poet and mystic, a penal reformer and advocate of a simpler life, a homosexual who ardently supported feminist aspirations.
Havelock Ellis is best known today as a pioneer of sex psychology, but he was also a writer on literature, the arts, travel, philosophy and social policy. Like Carpenter he developed his earliest political beliefs in the small socialist groups of the 1880s, and was a founder of the Fellowship of the New Life.
In their different ways, Carpenter through his political involvement and own way of life, Ellis through the influence of his books, they raised important questions about the interconnections between personal and sexual life and radical social change, questions which remain unresolved in modern socialist debates. In critically examining the achievements of these two men, Socialism and the New Life not only explores past debates, it also suggests connections which still need to be made in modern socialist and feminist discussions and practice.