John Addington Symonds

John Addington Symonds (5 October 1840 - 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of homosexuality, which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships. He referred to it as l'amour de l'impossible (love of the impossible). A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies about writers and artists. He also wrote much poetry inspired by his homosexual affairs. Apart from his own works, he also translated classical poetry on homoerotic themes, and wrote poems drawing on ancient Greek imagery and language such as Eudiades, which has been called "the most famous of his homoerotic poems". While the taboos of Victorian England prevented Symonds from speaking openly about homosexuality, his works published for a general audience contained strong implications and some of the first direct references to male-male sexual love in English literature. He died in Rome and was buried close to the grave of Percy Bysshe Shelley.