Writer, poet, socialist, environmentalist, active supporter of women’s emancipation, birth control, sex education and a campaigner for sexual freedom and sexual rights. It’s hard to conceive that in an era when homosexuality was a criminal offence, Edward Carpenter was living openly with his male lover - at the same time Oscar Wilde was in prison for his relationship with another man.

Carpenter, who for many years lived in Sheffield, has deservedly been attributed with being the founding father of what was later to become the Gay Liberation movement. 

‘…he adopted outlooks and ways of life before they crystallised into an alternative culture… nearly a hundred years before the advent of Gay Liberation, Carpenter contemplated an organisation of men who were attracted to members of their own sex.’ (Rowbotham).

Steve Slack, from ‘Friends Of Edward Carpenter’, will be talking about the life and loves of this influential man who made Sheffield his home in 1879.