A Brighton group is campaigning to preserve the grave of a forgotten literary figure.

Count Eric Stenbock was one of the most flamboyant and intriguing characters of late 19th Century literary circles.

A poet and gay society playboy, he numbered the likes of WB Yeats and Oscar Wilde among his friends.

Yeats described him as, "Scholar, connoisseur, drunkard, poet, pervert, most charming of men".

After his death in 1895 he was buried in Brighton Extra-Mural Cemetery, off Lewes Road, in a magnificent tomb with a cross several feet high.

While the names of his contemporaries have stayed in the public memory, Count Stenbock has faded into obscurity.

More than a century later, the neglected tomb is in danger of subsiding. Its toppled cross now lies across the grave, which is almost entirely covered by dense ivy.

Tom Sargant, of the Brighton Our Story Project, is a member of a group trying to rescue Stenbock's personality from the shadows.

He hopes to persuade Brighton and Hove City Council to preserve the grave.

He said: "I have known about him for a long time and am a fan because he was such a fascinating character.

"He really should be more known locally as in some ways he is such a classic Brighton character."

Stenbock was born near Cheltenham in Gloucestershire but his aristocratic family were originally from Estonia, where they owned vast estates.

His family moved to Brighton after his father's death and lived at Withdeane Hall in London Road, which has now been turned into flats.

Stenbock was sent to school abroad but returned in 1879 to go to Oxford University.

There he started writing poetry. He published two volumes, Love, Sleep And Dreams and Myrtle, Rue And Cypress in the early 1880s.

Described as the Quentin Crisp of the 1890s, he was an outrageous character who became more talked about for his degenerate exploits than for his poetry and writings.

He set up shrines to various gods and people, including the poet Shelley, and kept snakes, lizards, toads and salamanders in his bedroom.

He dressed in exotic costumes, smoked opium and drank copious amounts of alcohol.

At Oxford he had his dinner brought to him in a closed coffin and ate with a toad perched on his shoulder.

After two years living in an Estonian palace inherited from his father's family, Stenbock returned to England in 1887 and became friendly with many leading literary figures of the time, including Arthur Symons, Yeats, Wilde and Lionel Johnson.

Mr Sargant said: "He spent a lot of time in London and knew everybody.

"I think he used a lot of opium and when he started to really lose it he came back to Brighton to convalesce and just be strange."

Stenbock's lifestyle began to take its toll. From 1890 his health deteriorated and he became obsessed with death.

It was the theme of his last collection of poems, The Shadow Of Death, in 1893 and a book of short stories, Death: Romantic Tales, in 1894.

Everywhere he went he took with him a dog, a monkey and a life-size doll, which he was convinced was his son.

He died in 1895, aged 36, on the first day of friend Oscar Wilde's homosexuality trial.

Mr Sargant said: "Even his death was extravagant and perverse.

"He was brandishing a poker in an argument with his stepfather when he tripped and killed himself."

In the intervening years Stenbock became almost forgotten and was rarely mentioned in literary studies of his era.

But there has been a resurgence of interest in him and his work in recent years with the publication of The Collected Poems Of Eric, Count Stenbock, edited by David Tibet.