Challenging many of the values and conceits 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. An 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.<br /><br />Meticulously researched and beautifully written, this major new biography situates Carpenter's life and thought in relation to the contemporary social, aesthetic and intellectual movements, and explores his friendships with figures such as Walt Whitman, Robert Graves, Oscar Wilde, E.M. Forster, Isadora Duncan and Emma Goldman. <em>Edward Carpenter</em> paints a compelling portrait of a man who has been described as a “weather-vane” for his times.