John Addington Symonds

This is a new edition of "Shelley," originally published in 1909 by Macmillan And Co., Limited, in London. Part of the project Immortal Literature Series of classic literature, this is a new edition of the classic work published in 1909-not a facsimile reprint. Obvious typographical errors have been carefully corrected and the entire text has been reset and redesigned by Pen House Editions to enhance readability, while respecting the original edition. "Shelley" is the biography of Percy Bysshe Shelley, one of the greatest contributors to the romantic poetry in the English language, and author of "Prometheus Unbound" and many other poems. Best known for his lyric poems such as "Ode to the West wind" and "To a Skylark;" for his fourteen-line, iambic pentameter sonnet "Ozymandias," and for his treatise on atheism, "The Necessity of Atheism," the tract which led to his expulsion from Oxford University when he was only nineteen years old. Percy Bysshe Shelley was married to Mary Shelley (n e Godwin), the author of the successful novel "Frankenstein," one of the most frequently adapted works of the 19th century. About the Author: John Addington Symonds was born in Bristol, England, in 1840. He was an English poet, an author of several works, and a literary critic. In 1873 he wrote A Problem in Greek Ethics, which discussed homosexuality between men. He printed ten copies in 1883, before effectively publishing the book in 1901. He was also known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as for his translations and biographies. He wrote Our Life in the Swiss Highlands (1891), biographies of Percy Bysshe Shelley (1878), Philip Sidney (1886), Ben Jonson (1886) and Michelangelo (1893), several volumes of poetry and essays, and a translation of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini (1887). John Addington Symonds died in Rome in 1893. In 1896, Havelock Ellis published, in German-prepared with the collaboration of Dr. Hans Kurella-Das kontr re Geschlechtsgef hl (Leipzig, by Georg H. Wigand's Verlag), later revised and published by Ellis as Sexual Inversion-the first medical text in English about homosexuality, which he had co-authored with Symonds, and which would become a part of Ellis's six-volume Studies in the Psychology of Sex.

John Addington Symonds ( 5 October 1840 - 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies about writers and artists. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of male love (homosexuality), which he believed could include pederastic as well as egalitarian relationships, referring to it as l'amour de l'impossible (love of the impossible) He also wrote much poetry inspired by his homosexual affairs. John Morley, 1st Viscount Morley of Blackburn OM PC (24 December 1838 - 23 September 1923) was a British Liberal statesman, writer and newspaper editor. Initially a journalist, he was elected a Member of Parliament in 1883. He was Chief Secretary for Ireland in 1886 and between 1892 and 1895, Secretary of State for India between 1905 and 1910 and again in 1911 and Lord President of the Council between 1910 and 1914. Morley was a distinguished political commentator, and biographer of his hero, William Gladstone. Morley is best known for his writings and for his "reputation as the last of the great nineteenth-century Liberals". He opposed imperialism and the Boer War. His opposition to British entry into the First World War as an ally of Russia led him to leave government in August 1914.

This is a new edition of "A Problem in Greek Ethics," originally published in London in 1901 for "private circulation." Part of the project Immortal Literature Series of classic literature, this is a new edition of the classic work published in 1901-not a facsimile reprint. Obvious typographical errors have been carefully corrected and the entire text has been reset and redesigned by Pen House Editions to enhance readability, while respecting the original edition. "A Problem in Greek Ethics" is an account of sexuality between men in all its forms, with Greek culture as a backdrop. Perhaps the best description of "A Problem in Greek Ethics" is this one in "Queer Religion" (Praeger, 2012, edited by Donald L. Boisvert and Jay Emerson Johnson, pp. 180-181): "Published at the turn of the century, 'A Problem in Greek Ethics' is a systematic and well-documented exposition of the role of homosexuality in the different historical periods of ancient Greek society. Throughout most of his work, Symonds prefers to use the term 'paiderastia' to 'homosexuality, ' the latter a term he only uses in rare instances. Nevertheless, 'paiderastia, ' in Symonds's work, amounts to a broad concept of homosexuality rather than to our current concept of pederasty. Whitman and his work are never mentioned by Symonds in 'A Problem in Greek Ethics, ' but the conceptual connection had already been made explicit in Walt Whitman: 'A Study' eight years earlier. In the introductory lines to 'A Problem in Greek Ethics, ' the reader is alerted that ancient Greece offers a unique example in history of 'a great and highly developed race not only tolerating homosexual passions, but deeming them of spiritual value, and attempting to use them for the benefit of society.' According to Symonds, while homosexual relations were not prominent in the so-called heroic age of Greece, it was nevertheless the love of Achilles for Patroclus, as narrated by Homer, that conferred in a later age of Greek history an almost religious sanction to the martial form of paiderastia. This episode in the Iliad inspired in later generations an ideal of manly love, which he describes as 'a powerful and masculine emotion, in which effeminacy had no part, and which by no means excluded the ordinary sexual feelings.' To which he adds that the tie created by these relationships was 'both more spiritual and more energetic than] that which bound man to woman.' While Homer knew not about homosexuality, very early in Greek history paiderastia became a national institution giving rise, according to Symonds, to a distinction between a noble, spiritual, form of masculine passion, which he calls "heroic love," and a base and sensual one, which he identifies as 'vulgar love.'" About the Author: John Addington Symonds was born in Bristol, England, in 1840. He was an English poet, an author of several works, and a literary critic. In 1873 he wrote "A Problem in Greek Ethics," which discussed homosexuality between men. He printed ten copies in 1883, before effectively publishing the book in 1901. He was also known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as for his translations and biographies. He wrote "Our Life in the Swiss Highlands" (1891), biographies of Philip Sidney (1886), Ben Jonson (1886) and Michelangelo (1893), several volumes of poetry and essays, and a translation of the "Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini" (1887). John Addington Symonds died in Rome in 1893. In 1896, Havelock Ellis published, in German, prepared with the collaboration of Dr. Hans Kurella, "Das kontr re Geschlechtsgef hl" (Leipzig, by Georg H. Wigand's Verlag), later revised and published by Ellis as "Sexual Inversion"-the first medical text in English about homosexuality, which he had co-authored with Symonds, and which would become a part of Ellis's six-volume "Studies in the Psychology of Sex."