Symonds, John Addington

born Oct. 5, 1840, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.

died April 19, 1893, Rome

English essayist, poet, and biographer.

He traveled extensively for his health, finally settling in Switzerland. His chief work, Renaissance in Italy (1875–86), is a series of extended essays on cultural history. His writings include translations, travel sketches, and studies of personalities such as Percy B. Shelley, Ben Jonson, Sir Philip Sidney, Michelangelo, and Walt Whitman. His poetry served primarily as a release from his difficult emotional life. A Problem in Greek Ethics (written 1871) and A Problem in Modern Ethics (1881) were among the first serious works treating homosexuality.

Symonds, chalk drawing by C. Orsi; in the National Portrait Gallery, London

By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London

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▪ English writer

born Oct. 5, 1840, Bristol, Gloucestershire, Eng.

died April 19, 1893, Rome [Italy]

      English essayist, poet, and biographer best known for his cultural history of the Italian Renaissance.

      After developing symptoms of tuberculosis while a fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, Symonds traveled extensively for his health, settling in Davos, Switz., in 1880.

      Symonds' chief work, Renaissance in Italy, 7 vol. (1875–86), is a series of extended essays rather than a systematic history. Fluent and picturesque, it was deeply indebted to such continental interpreters of the Renaissance as Jacob Burckhardt. Symonds diffused his literary energies over English literature, Greek poetry, travel sketches, translations, and studies of such literary and artistic personalities as Shelley (1878), Ben Jonson (1886), Sir Philip Sidney (1886), Michelangelo (1893), and Walt Whitman (1893), of whom he was one of the first European admirers. Both his enthusiasm for the Renaissance and his recommendation, in Studies of the Greek Poets (1873–76), of Hellenism aligned him with the Aesthetic movement. His translations of The Sonnets of Michael Angelo Buonarroti and Tommaso Campanella (1878, first English translation of the poetry of Michelangelo) and of Cellini's autobiography, 2 vol. (1888), are also notable. Symonds' own poetry was published as Many Moods (1878), New and Old (1880), Animi Figura (1882), and Vagabunduli Libellus (1884), his powerful love sonnets discreetly obscuring the homosexual nature of the erotic experience described. His A Problem in Greek Ethics (written 1871; privately printed 1883) and A Problem in Modern Ethics (privately printed 1891) were two of the first serious works on the subject of homosexuality. His Memoirs, which contain a frank account of his sexuality, were first published in 1984.

Additional Reading

Phyllis Grosskurth, John Addington Symonds: A Biography (1964, reprinted 1975).

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