John Addington Symonds was born on October 5, 1893, in Bristol, England. Symonds was a literary critic and poet whose works were inspired by his same-sex sexual affairs. In 1858, as a freshman at Oxford University, he was gifted a copy of Ionica, a collection of homoerotic poems by John Conington, a professor of Latin. Later that same year, Symonds fell in love and started a relationship with a peer named William Fear Dyer. Although convinced by his father to end the relationship, Symonds continued to be friends with Dyer for several years. In 1864, Symonds married a woman, eventually having four children with her. Despite this fact, Symonds continued to have same-sex sexual affairs throughout his life. Symonds is best known for writing A Problem in Greek Ethics, a passionate defense of same-sex relations and one of the earliest works to reference homosexuality by that name, and for writing A Problem in Modern Ethics, which advocated for homosexual law reform. Symonds translated many classical poems that dealt with homoerotic themes, and his private memoirs constitute some of the earliest known self-conscious gay autobiographical writings. On April 19, 1893, Symonds died while travelling in Rome, and was buried there. For more on John Addington Symonds, see Aspects of Queer Existence in 19th-Century America, by Rich Wilson.