Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1

John Addington Symonds, the Younger (1840-1893) was an English poet and literary critic. He was an early advocate of the validity of male love which included for him pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, and which he would refer to as l'amour de l'impossible. At Oxford, Symonds began to reveal his academic ability. In 1860 he took a first in "Mods" and won the Newdigate prize with a poem on The Escorial and in 1862 he obtained a first in Literae Humaniores and in the following year was winner of the Chancellor's English Essay. His major work, Renaissance in Italy, appeared in seven volumes at intervals between 1875 and 1886. Amongst his other works are Percy Bysshe Shelley (1879), The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti (1893) and Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece (1898).