John Addington Symonds

John Addington Symonds , 1840-93, English author. Educated at Harrow and Oxford, constant ill health exiled him for the greater part of his life to Italy and Switzerland. His many writings include travel books, Sketches in Italy and Greece (1874) and Italian Byways (1883); literary essays, Introduction to the Study of Dante (1872) and Studies of Greek Poets (1873-76); biographies of Shelley (1878), Sir Philip Sidney (1886), Ben Jonson (1886), and Michelangelo (1893); a masterly translation of the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1888); and several volumes of verse, notably Many Moods (1878) and Animi Figura (1882). Symonds's major work, The Renaissance in Italy (7 vol., 1875-86), is a classic collection of sketches in cultural history.

Bibliography: See biography by P. Grosskurth (1964); study by V. W. Brooks (1914, repr. 1970).

Symonds, John Addington (1840–93), suffered from tuberculosis, and spent much of his life in Italy and Switzerland. He was much attracted by the Hellenism of the Renaissance, and both his prose and poetry are coloured by his concept of platonic love and his admiration for male beauty. His largest work, Renaissance in Italy (1875–86), is more picturesque than scholarly, but remains a valuable source of information. His works include collections of travel sketches and impressions; several volumes of verse; a translation of the autobiography of Cellini (1888); and translations of Greek and Italian poetry. He married in 1864 but acknowledged increasingly his own homosexuality, and campaigned, albeit discreetly, for legal reform and more outspoken recognition of inversion, which he saw as a congenital condition. His privately printed pamphlets A Problem in Greek ethics (1883) and A Problem in Modern Ethics (1891) were reproduced in part by H. Ellis in Sexual Inversion (1897).