Father and Son

Sir Edmund William Gosse was born in 1849 to the Naturalist Philip Henry Gosse and the poet and illustrator Emily Bowes. Gosse was raised within the devout Protestant Sect, the Plymouth Brethen, and after the death of his mother, Gosse’s father struggled to reconcile his faith with the increasing evidence for Darwin’s theory of evolution. The psychological struggle to break away from his father’s influence formed the subject of his 1907 biography, Father and Son. A poet and a critic, as well as the librarian of the House of Lords library, Gosse wielded considerable influence in the art world of the early 20th century, and was instrumental in introducing the works of Isben to the English-speaking world. Gosse was knighted in 1925, three years before his death in 1928.