Ellis was born in St Pancras, London in 1854, the son of Edward George Ellis, a builder.
He had a studio on Baker Street in London from 1884 until 1898.
From 1898 to 1918 he was in partnership with Stanislaw Julian Ignacy Ostrorog and Alfred Ellis & Walery in new premises on Baker Street.
Ellis has 180 portraits listed in the national collection in the National Portrait Gallery in London, mainly of "theatrical royalty" such as Oscar Wilde and Dan Leno.
Ellis and Ostrorog appear to have kept their authorship and sitters separate, while sharing studio facilities.
Prints of his photographs were published in The Illustrated London News as wood-engravings.

Ellis took a leading role in protecting the copyright of photographers, fighting several cases in the High Courts.

One case involved Ellis's photographic portrait of the actress Mary Moore.
She having posed at the invitation of Ellis he had not charged her for the sitting or for the copies of the photographs he gave her.
However, when one of these was subsequently published in The Ludgate Monthly Ellis sued, stating that he owned the copyright to the photograph as he had given it to Moore as a gift.
The Court ruled in his favor as the "author" of the work, and, because Moore had not paid for the photograph Ellis retained ownership of it.

In 1887 Ellis married Mary Catherine Corbett, and together they had a son Douglas Ellis (1891-) and a daughter, Effie Mary Ellis (1889–1982).

He died in 1930 and was buried in East Finchley Cemetery (Wiki).

Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish poet and playwright. 

After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. 

He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts (Wiki).