John Addington Symonds 5 October 1840 Ð 19 April 1893) was an English poet and literary critic. Although he married and had a family, he was an early advocate of homosexuality. A cultural historian, he was known for his work on the Renaissance, as well as numerous biographies about writers and artists. John Symonds was born at Bristol, England in 1840. His father, the senior John Addington Symonds, M.D. (1807Ð1871), was the author of Criminal Responsibility (1869), The Principles of Beauty (1857) and Sleep and Dreams.