John Addington Symonds

SYMONDS, John Addington. b. Bristol, 5 October 1840; d. Rome, 19 April 1893. The son of a well known and prosperous physician, he was educated at Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate Prize for English poetry and became briefly a Fellow of Magdalen College (1862-63). After some years travelling in Europe, he lived in London and married (1864), and then moved to Bristol (1868). He became a prolific and much admired writer both in prose (An Introduction to the Study of Dante, 1872, Studies of the Greek Poets, 1873, and Renaissance in Italy: the Age of the Despots, 1875), and in poetry (Many Moods, 1878, New and Old, 1880, Animi Figura, 1882, Fragilia Labilia,...