The Letters of John Addington Symonds (3 Vol Set)

3 volume set, printed 1967-1969. Hardcover and dust jacket. Tears to jackets. Dust jackets in protective mylar covers. Good bindings and covers. Shelf wear. Clean, unmarked pages. John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) was an English essayist, poet, and biographer best known for his cultural history of the Italian Renaissance. Symonds was in the forefront of the 'bourgeois radical' men and women with socialist ideals who were destined to reform public opinion in the 1890s. He was a dynamic member of that remarkable group of men concerned with art who worked towards a revival of culture, often in conjunction with politics: John Ruskin, Walter Pater, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, William Morris, Edward Carpenter, Oscar Wilde. His specific contribution to the regeneration of society was as a pioneer in the field of gay rights; he was the first modern historian of (male) homosexuality, and the first advocate of gay liberation in Britain. When he read Plato's Phaedrus and Symposium in 1858, he realized that the ignoble behavior of his fellow schoolboys at Harrow had an illustrious past, and when he read Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass in 1865 he became convinced that comradeship had the potential for a no less illustrious future. Most of his writings became part of a great magnum opus on the love of man for man, and much of what he did was devoted to the cause of homosexual liberation. From The Library of Herbert Boyce Satcher. Satcher was a notable early 20th century American homosexual book collector. Satcher's library was sold by Freeman's auction, where Jim Graham bought it. From the estate of Jim Graham, former Washington D.C. City Council Member (1998-2014). Graham was head of Whitman-Walker Clinic and a noted gay community pioneer. This is an oversized or heavy book, which requires additional postage for international delivery outside the US.…