A Short Biographical Dictionary of English Literature/Symonds, John Addington

by John William Cousin

Symonds, john Addington (1840-1893).—Writer on art and literature, s. of a physician in Bristol, was ed. at Harrow and Oxf. His delicate health obliged him to live abroad. He pub. (1875-86) History of the Italian Renaissance, and translated the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini. He also pub. some books of poetry including Many Moods (1878) and Animi Figura (1882), and among his other publications were Introduction to the Study of Dante (1872) Studies of the Greek Poets (1873 and 1876), Shakespeare's Predecessors in the English Drama (1884), and Lives of various poets, including Ben Jonson, Shelley, and Walt Whitman. He also made remarkable translations of the sonnets of Michelangelo and Campanella, and wrote upon philosophical subjects in various periodicals.