The John Addington Symonds Project (JASP) was launched in January 2019 under the aegis of the Classics Research Lab (CRL) of Johns Hopkins University. Its purpose is to investigate the life and work of the Victorian scholar and writer John Addington Symonds (born Bristol 1840, died Rome 1893), with particular emphasis on his study of classical antiquity. Like other CRL projects, JASP also seeks to provide a model for collaborative research between students and faculty in the humanities.

Among Symonds’s many writings were two privately printed, quietly circulated essays: A Problem in Greek Ethics (1883), one of the first major modern studies of Ancient Greek sexuality, and A Problem in Modern Ethics (1891), which brought the word homosexual, recently coined in German, into English-language print for the very first time. Both essays would have a significant influence on the emerging movement for gay rights.

The project includes a Lost Library collection in Hathi Trust, which allows users to browse the collections, virtually take books off the shelf with ease, and even to perform basic keyword searches across the entire library.

This collection contains three letters and a photograph associated with John Addington Symonds, a bisexual English poet and literary critic.

Two letters are written from Symonds to his friend Charles Kains Jackson, dated November 16, 1891 and September 15, 1892. The 1891 letter, of which there is the original letter and a typewritten copy, discusses matters of mutual interest, including Michelangelo, Edward Cracroft Lefroy, The Artist magazine, and Antinous. The 1892 letter extends Symonds's sympathy on the death of Jackson's mother and mentions their recent visit in Falmouth harbour where Jackson was telling him about his "home life with Cecil," a reference to Jackson's cousin Cecil Castle with whom Jackson had been romantically involved.

One letter is written by Robert L. Peters to Donald Weeks on February 28, 1964 about Charles Kains Jackson and John Addington Symonds, asking for information on their work and personal lives.

The cabinet card photograph of Symonds dates from 1886 and shows him sitting backwards on a chair, reading a book and smoking a pipe.