Symonds, John Addington ___ 1840-1893 ___ British ___ writer

BIOGRAPHICAL SUMMARY
Symonds was born in Bristol, and educated at Harrow School and Balliol College, Oxford, where he won the Newdigate prize with a poem 'The Escorial'. In 1862 he was elected to an open fellowship at Magdalen but his health broke down, and he travelled to Switzerland. On returning to London in 1864, he married Janet Catherine North. During the following five years she gave birth to three daughters. However, the couple appear to have led fairly separate emotional lives, with Symonds always pursuing young men as soul mates. In the second half of the 1860s, Symonds had further mental problems, and travelled to the Continent again. In 1867, he moved to Bristol, where he did some lecturing. It is only in the 1870s, that he began to publish significant volumes, many on poetry, such as 'An Introduction to the Study of Dante' and 'Studies of the Greek Poets'. In 1875, Catherine gave birth to their fourth daughter. Symonds major work, 'Renaissance in Italy', was published in several volumes, starting in the early 1880s. About the same time, he moved to Davos, Switzerland, more or less permanently. Biographies of Shelley, Jonson and Michelangelo followed. He also wrote some memoirs, but handed them and a lifetime of diaries, to his literary executor, Horatio Brown. Subsequently, Brown wrote a biography of Symonds using many extracts from the diaries. However, all the diaries were destroyed after Brown's death.
A biography link
Wikipedia bio
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DIARY DATES, CONTENT DESCRIPTORS
1860-1888 ___ literary travel art music self health love/sex creativity Italy Switzerland

WEB TEXT LINKS
etext

ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPT LINKS
Bristol University Library - possibly

SOME PUBLISHED TITLES
John Addington Symonds
 

May 2005, August 2008, April 2013
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IMPORTANT NOTES AND CAUTIONS: 1) The first line of basic information may be incomplete in several ways: some historical figures have different names (titles, pen-names); their birth and death dates may be unknown or uncertain (g - guess, c - circa); similarly, their occupations may be unknown, or they may have had other jobs; and, for early diarists, I've used 'British' a bit too freely. 2) The biographical summary may not be accurate. It was compiled quickly from various sources, mostly on the internet, and the facts were not checked anywhere near as rigorously as they would have been if they'd been intended for publication in a printed form. 3) The journal dates and descriptors (which are in no particular order) must be treated with caution: since I have not examined the diaries myself, the descriptors are only guesses based on bibliographies, anthologies and internet biographies. 4) For the biography and etext links, I have ignored any sites with charges, and I have avoided, wherever possible, those with pop-ups or too much advertising. I have limited myself to providing three etext links where there is some variety between them. 5) For the original manuscript links, I have limited myself to providing a maximum of two (although, for a few diarists, their original diaries are held in more than two places). 6) I have provided the titles - chosen randomly - for up to three printed editions of the diaries.

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