Havelock Ellis is the editor of this book, Four Plays of Christopher Marlowe. Yes, I didn’t get it wrong. It’s the Havelock Ellis you know: The man who co-author the first medical textbook in English on homosexuality in 1897, and the leading researchers on sexual practices and inclinations, including transgender. His research was so progressive that the publisher of his books was even prosecuted for obscenity at that time.
Besides his outstanding research on human sexuality, he is also a first-class drama critic and writer. He wrote a book called “From Marlowe to Shaw,” published after his death in 1939 and a general introduction on the English Drama During the Reigns of Elizabeth and James I by J.A. Symonds, in 1887. Lewis Mumford once described him: “His mind was shot full of poetry but his business was clear thinking.” This is perhaps how Ellis managed to remain his love of poetry and drama with his cutting edge research on sexualities.
Like Jeffery Fieldsted of The George Macy Imagery, I am also not sure from where the LEC pulled out an introduction by Ellis in 1966, 27 years after his death.