The book brings together for the first time John Addington Symonds' key writings on homosexuality, and the entire correspondence between Symonds and Havelock Ellis on the project of Sexual Inversion. The source edition contains a critical introduction to the sources.

This historically significant essay was one of the first attempts in modern times to examine homosexuality, putting it in a medical, historical and legal context, and to propose that civil rights should be extended to gay people. Along with Edward Carpenter and Walt Whitman, Symonds was one of the pioneers of gay rights and spirituality. Symonds was an aristocratic English man of letters who, by virtue of his class status, was able to lead a closeted but very active sexual life. He overcame the fear and loathing that Victorian society attached to homosexuality through an internal struggle which is today known as 'coming out'. However, he had to live a double life, taking lovers from lower social classes while embedded in a sham marriage, and normally had write about his experiences in veiled language. Even this privately printed essay, which discusses homosexuality frankly, is extremely circumspect. We have to wade through quite a bit of Victorian pseudo-science and gobbledygook to get to the very valid points that Symonds was trying to make. He concludes that homosexuality is innate and not a disease or mental disorder, gay sexuality is every bit as natural as heterosexuality, and homosexual acts between consenting adults should not be treated as criminal. These concepts are quite moderate (although at the time they were, of course, radical), and today are widely accepted. Symonds later wrote a companion essay to this, A Problem in Greek Ethics, which drew on his extensive classical knowledge to examine homosexuality in ancient Greece.

Autobiografisch werk van John Addington Symonds (1840-1893), een van de eersten in Engeland die een verdediging van homoseksualiteit durfde te schrijven.

In this work, Symonds argues against Krafft-Ebings belief that homosexuality is acquired. The volumes contents include an historical survey of homosexuality, various modern theories as to its cause, and a concluding section dealing with suggested amendments in legislation. Considered a major classic in field, Symonds analysis of homosexuality with some religious relevance also contains a chapter on the very sensitive subject of Walt Whitman and homosexuality, which is the earliest serious study of the subject. Poet, essayist, and literary historian, John Addington Symonds (1840-1893) delved into every field of the humanities, writing the celebrated Renaissance in Italy and publishing translations of the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and the Sonnets of Michelangelo and Campanella; he wrote biographies of Shelley, Sidney, Jonson, and Whitman, and collaborated with Havelock Ellis on a number of projects in sexology. He is remembered for his untiring efforts to loosen the restraints on homosexuals in England, and his Memoirs are the only diary of a Victorian homosexual of his stature.