Poet, essayist, and literary historian, John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) delved into every field of the humanities, writing the celebrated Renaissance in Italy and publishing translations of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and the Sonnets of Michelangelo and Campanella; he wrote biographies of Shelley, Sidney, and Jonson, and collaborated with Havelock Ellis on a number of projects in sexology. He is remembered for his untiring efforts to loosen the restraints on homosexuals in England, and his Memoirs are the only diary of a Victorian homosexual of his stature.

"There is an interval of more than thirty years between the earliest of the series, "Clifton and a Lad's Love," and the latest. I have tried to make the selection representative of the different kinds of work in which I have been principally engaged - Greek and Renaissance Literature, Description of Places, Translation, Criticism, Original Verse."