View source for Edmund Gosse

{{Short description|English poet, author and critic (1849–1928)}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2014}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}
[[File:Edmund Gosse by John Singer Sargent.jpg|thumb|250px|Edmund Gosse, by [[John Singer Sargent]], 1886.]]
'''Sir Edmund William Gosse''' {{postnominals|country=GBR|CB}} ({{IPAc-en|g|ɒ|s}}; 21 September 1849{{spaced ndash}}16 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small [[Protestant]] sect, the [[Plymouth Brethren]], but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhood in the book ''[[Father and Son (Gosse book)|Father and Son]]'' has been described as the first psychological biography.

His friendship with the sculptor [[Hamo Thornycroft]] inspired a successful career as a historian of late-Victorian sculpture. His translations of [[Henrik Ibsen]] helped to promote that playwright in England, and he encouraged the careers of [[Sarojini Naidu]], [[Toru Dutt]], [[W. B. Yeats]] and [[James Joyce]]. He also lectured in English literature at [[Cambridge University]].

==Early life==
Gosse was the son of [[Philip Henry Gosse]] and [[Emily Bowes]].<ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=http://www.britannica.com/eb/article-9037475Sir-Edmund-Gosse|title= Sir Edmund Gosse|encyclopedia=[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]}}</ref> His father was a naturalist and one of the chief figures among Brethren,<ref>{{cite book |last=Wertheimer|first=Douglas|title=Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, ''p.xvii''|url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/1495001167?oclcNum=1495001167|year=2024|publisher=Brethren Archivists and Historians Network|isbn=978-1739128326}}</ref> his mother was a published poet, author, and leading religious tract writer.<ref>[[R. B. Freeman|Freeman, R. B.]] and Douglas Wertheimer, “Emily Gosse: A Bibliography,” [http://brethrenhistory.org/home.htm Brethren Historical Review 17], 2021, 25-78. [[Issn|ISSN]] [https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/230161566 1755-9383].</ref> Both were deeply committed to a small Protestant sect, known by the misnomer [[Plymouth Brethren]].<ref>Wertheimer, D.: ''Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography'', page 109 fn.53, notes that Emily Bowes and Philip Henry Gosse first met in Hackney in 1843. The date, once disputed, was determined to be accurate by Douglas Wertheimer, "The Truth About 1843, and Why It's Important: Gosse, Brethren, Jamaica and the Scorpion," [http://brethrenhistory.org/home.htm Brethren Historical Review 18], 2022, 15-63.</ref> His childhood was initially happy as they spent their summers in [[Devon]], where his father was developing the ideas that gave rise to the craze for the [[marine aquarium]]. After his mother died of breast cancer when he was eight and they moved to Devon, his life with his father became increasingly strained by his father's expectations that he should follow in his religious tradition. Gosse was sent to a boarding school where he began to develop his interests in literature. In 1860, his father remarried the deeply religious Quaker spinster Eliza Brightwen (1813–1900), whose brother Thomas tried to encourage Edmund to become a banker. He later gave an account of his childhood in the book ''[[Father and Son (Gosse book)|Father and Son]]'', which has been described as the first psychological biography.{{citation needed|date=November 2024}} At the age of 18 and working in the [[British Museum]] in London, he broke away from his father's influence in a dramatic [[coming of age]]. Nearly a century after Gosse's death, a study based on his published remarks and writings about his father concluded that, in varying degrees, they are "riddled with error, distortion, contradictions, unwarranted claims, misrepresentation, abuse of the written record, and unfamiliarity with the subject."<ref>Douglas Wertheimer, [https://nineteenthcenturyprose.org/volume-48-1-2-spring-fall-2021/ "A Son and His Father: Edmund Gosse's Comments and Portraits, 1875–1910"], ''Nineteenth-Century Prose'' 48 (Spring/Fall 2021), 45–92.</ref>

Eliza Gosse's brother George Brightwen was the husband of [[Eliza Brightwen]] née Elder (1830–1906), a naturalist and author, whose first book was published in 1890.<ref>{{DNB12|wstitle=Brightwen, Eliza |pages=255–256}}</ref>  After Eliza Brightwen's death, Edmund Gosse arranged for the publication of her two posthumous works, ''Last Hours with Nature'' (1908) and ''Eliza Brightwen, the Life and Thoughts of a Naturalist'' (1909), both edited by W. H. Chesson, and the latter book with an introduction and epilogue by Gosse.

Gosse was second cousin of Annie Morgan, also of strict Plymouth Brethren upbringing, who married physician Alexander Waugh (1840–1906) and was mother of [[Arthur Waugh]] and grandmother to the writers [[Alec Waugh]] and [[Evelyn Waugh]].<ref>Brennan, Michael G., ''Evelyn Waugh: Fictions, Faith and Family'', Bloomsbury, 2013, p. xvi.</ref>

==Career==
[[Image:Philip Henry Gosse & Edmund Gosse (1857).jpg|thumb|upright|Edmund Gosse in 1857, with father [[Philip Henry Gosse]]]]
Gosse started his career as assistant librarian at the [[British Museum]] from 1867 alongside the songwriter [[Theo Marzials]],<ref>{{cite book|first=John|last= Betjeman|author-link=John Betjeman|title=Trains and Buttered Toast|publisher= John Murray |year=2007|isbn =978-0-7195-6127-6|page =170}}</ref> a post which [[Charles Kingsley]] helped his father obtain for him. An early book of poetry published with a friend [[John Arthur Blaikie]] gave him an introduction to the [[Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood]]. Trips to Denmark and Norway in 1872–74, where he visited [[Hans Christian Andersen]] and [[Frederik Paludan-Müller]], led to publishing success with reviews of [[Henrik Ibsen]] and [[Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson]] in the ''[[Cornhill Magazine]]''.<ref name=thwaite>{{cite book|first=Ann|last=Thwaite|author-link=Ann Thwaite|title=Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape|publisher=London, Secker & Warburg|year=1984}}</ref>
He was soon reviewing Scandinavian literature in a variety of publications. He became acquainted with [[Alfred, Lord Tennyson]] and friends with [[Robert Browning]], [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]], [[Thomas Hardy]] and [[Henry James]].

In the meantime, he published his first solo volume of poetry, ''On Viol and Flute'' (1873) and a work of criticism, ''Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe'' (1879). Gosse and [[Robert Louis Stevenson]] first met while teenagers, and after 1879, when Stevenson came to London on occasion, he would stay with Gosse and his family. In 1875 Gosse became a translator at the [[Board of Trade]], a post which he held until 1904 and gave him time for his writing<ref>{{cite journal|title=Gosse, Edmund|journal=Who's Who|year=1907|volume= 59|page=706|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=yEcuAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA706|last1=Addison|first1=Henry Robert|last2=Oakes|first2=Charles Henry|last3=Lawson|first3=William John|last4=Sladen|first4=Douglas Brooke Wheelton}}</ref> and enabled him to marry and start a family.

From 1884 to 1890, Gosse lectured in English literature at [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], despite his  lack of academic qualifications. Cambridge University gave him an honorary MA in 1886, and Trinity College formally admitted him as a member, 'by order of the Council', in 1889.<ref>{{acad|id=GS886EW|name=Gosse, Edmund William}}</ref> He made a successful American lecture tour in 1884 and was much in demand as a speaker and on committees as well as publishing a string of critical works as well as poetry and histories.

He became, in the 1880s, one of the most important art critics dealing with sculpture (writing mainly for the ''Saturday Review'') with an interest spurred on by his intimate friendship with the sculptor [[Hamo Thornycroft]].  Gosse would eventually write the first history of the renaissance of late-Victorian sculpture in 1894 in a four-part series for ''[[The Art Journal]]'', dubbing the movement the [[New Sculpture]]. In 1902 he published an English translation of ''[[Alexandre Dumas fils]]'' ''[[Lady of the Camellias]].''<ref>{{cite web | url=https://archive.org/details/ladyofcamelliast00dumauoft/page/n7/mode/2up | title=The lady of the camellias. Translated from the French &#91;of&#93; Alexandre Dumas, fils, with a critical introd. By Edmund Gosse. A front. And numerous other ports. With descriptive notes by Octave Uzanne | date=1902 | publisher=New York P.F. Collier }}</ref>

In 1904, he became the librarian of the [[House of Lords Library]], where he exercised considerable influence till he retired in 1914. He wrote for the ''[[Sunday Times]]'', and was an expert on [[Thomas Gray]], [[William Congreve]], [[John Donne]], [[Jeremy Taylor]], and [[Coventry Patmore]]. He can also take credit for introducing [[Henrik Ibsen]]'s work to the British public. Gosse and [[William Archer (critic)|William Archer]] collaborated in translating ''[[Hedda Gabler]]'' and ''[[The Master Builder]]''; those two translations were performed throughout the 20th century. Gosse and Archer, along with [[George Bernard Shaw]], were perhaps the literary critics most responsible for popularising Ibsen's plays among English-speaking audiences.
Gosse was instrumental in getting official financial support for two struggling Irish writers, W.B. Yeats in 1910 and James Joyce in 1915. This enabled both writers to continue their chosen careers.<ref>''Arthur Griffith with James Joyce and W.B. Yeats - Liberating Ireland'' [[Anthony J. Jordan]], Westport books 2013, p, 106.{{ISBN|978-0957622906}}</ref>

His most famous book is the autobiographical ''[[Father and Son (Gosse book)|Father and Son]]'', about his troubled relationship with his [[Plymouth Brethren]] father, Philip, which was dramatised for television by [[Dennis Potter]].  Published anonymously in 1907, this followed a biography he had written of his father as naturalist, when he was urged by [[George Moore (novelist)|George Moore]] among others to write more about his past.  Historians caution, though, that notwithstanding its psychological insight and literary excellence, Gosse's narrative is often at odds with the verifiable facts of his own and his parents' lives.<ref>{{cite book|first=Ann |last=Thwaite|title=Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse, 1810–1888|location=London|publisher= Faber & Faber|year= 2002|pages=xvi–xvii}}</ref> In later life, he became a formative influence on [[Siegfried Sassoon]], the nephew of his lifelong friend, Hamo Thornycroft.  Sassoon's mother was a friend of Gosse's wife, Ellen.  Gosse was also closely tied to figures such as [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]], [[John Addington Symonds]], and [[André Gide]].

His book ''The Autumn Garden'', which was published in 1908 by the London publisher [[Heinemann (publisher)|William Heinemann]], includes over 50 individual poems and essays.<ref>{{cite book|last=Gosse|first=Edmund|title=The Autumn Garden|year=1908|publisher=William Heinemann|location=London|page=113}}</ref>

Gosse was the literary editor for the 1911 edition of the ''[[Encyclopædia Britannica]]''.<ref>{{cite book|author=Thomas, Gillian|title=A Position to Command Respect: Women and the Eleventh Britannica|publisher=Scarecrow Press|year=1992|page=[https://archive.org/details/positiontocomman0000thom/page/3 3]|isbn=978-0-8108-2567-3 |url=https://archive.org/details/positiontocomman0000thom|url-access=registration}}</ref>

==Personal life==
Gosse married Ellen Epps (23 March 1850 – 29 August 1929), a young painter in the Pre-Raphaelite circle, who was the daughter of [[George Napoleon Epps]]. Though she was initially determined to pursue her art, she succumbed to his determined courting and they married in August 1875, with a reception at the house of [[Lawrence Alma-Tadema]] (her brother-in-law) and visiting Gosse's father and step-mother (who did not attend the registry office wedding) at the end of their honeymoon in Devon and Cornwall.  She continued to paint and wrote stories and reviews for various publications. In 1907, she inherited a sizeable fortune from her uncle, James Epps (the brother of [[John Epps]] and who had made his fortune in cocoa).<ref name=thwaite />

They were married more than 53 years and they had three children: Emily Teresa ("Tessa") (1877-1951),<ref>R. B. Freeman and D. Wertheimer, [https://books.google.com/books?id=mChBAAAAMAAJ&q=r.+b.+freeman+philip+henry+gosse ''Philip Henry Gosse: A Bibliography''] (Folkestone, Kent: Dawson, 1980), p. 130.</ref> Philip Henry George (1879–1959) who became a physician (but is probably best known as the author of ''The Pirates' Who's Who'' (1924)<ref>{{cite journal |title=Obituary: Philip Gosse |journal=Br. Med. J. |year=1959 |volume=2 |pages=761–764 |doi=10.1136/bmj.2.5154.761-c |issue=5154|s2cid=220163089 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.auspostalhistory.com/articles/1944.shtml |title=Capt. Philip Henry George Gosse, M.D., Doctor, Naturalist, Author |website=Australian Postal History & Social Philately|date=4 April 2023 }}</ref>) and [[Sylvia Gosse|Laura Sylvia]] (1881-1968), who became a well-known painter.

Despite a reportedly happy marriage Gosse had consistent, if deeply closeted, homosexual desires. Although initially reluctant to acknowledge these desires, in 1890 Gosse did acknowledge to [[John Addington Symonds]], around the time the latter was working on ''A Problem in Modern Ethics'', that indeed he (Gosse) was attracted to men, thus confirming suspicions Symonds had voiced earlier. "Either way, I entirely deeply sympathize with you. Years ago I wanted to write to you about all this," Gosse wrote to Symonds, "and withdrew through cowardice. I have had a very fortunate life, but there has been this obstinate twist in it! I have reached a quieter time—some beginnings of that Sophoclean period when the wild beast dies. He is not dead, but tamer; I understand him & the trick of his claws."<ref>''Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World''. Nicholas C. Edsal, page 106</ref><ref>''Essays on Gay Literature''. Stuart Kellogg, page 87</ref>

==Honours==
Gosse was named a Companion of the [[Order of the Bath]] (CB) in 1912.<ref>[http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/handlists/169BCGosse.pdf  Leeds University Library, The Gosse Collection] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140826114330/http://www.leeds.ac.uk/library/spcoll/handlists/169BCGosse.pdf |date=26 August 2014 }}; Retrieved 4 August 2013</ref> He was [[Knight Bachelor|knighted]] in 1925.<ref name=times>{{cite news | title =The New Year Honours. Three Peerages., Rewards For Public Service., Two O.M.'S. | work= [[The Times]] | location = London | at = p 13; col G | date = 1 January 1925|issue= 43848}}</ref>

==In popular culture==
*His book ''Father and Son'' partially inspired ''[[Oscar and Lucinda]]'', a novel by [[Peter Carey (novelist)|Peter Carey]], which won the 1988 [[Booker Prize]] and the 1989 [[Miles Franklin Award]].
*''Father and Son'' was also the basis for [[Dennis Potter]]'s television play ''[[Where Adam Stood]]''.
*[[Julian Barnes]] has an academic called Ed Winterton devoted to writing a biography of Gosse in his 1984 novel ''[[Flaubert's Parrot]]''.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Barnes, Julian.|title=Flaubert's Parrot|date=1984|publisher=Picador|isbn=0-330-28976-4|location=London|pages=38|oclc=13426315}}</ref>

==Works==

===Published verse===
*''Madrigals, Songs, and Sonnets'' (1870), co-author [[John Arthur Blaikie]]
*''On Viol and Flute'' (1873)
*''King Erik'' (1876)
*''New Poems'' (1879)
*''Firdausi in Exile'' (1885)
*''In Russet and Silver'' (1894)
*''Collected Poems'' (1896)
*''Hypolympia, or the Gods on the Island'' (1901), an "ironic phantasy", the scene of which is laid in the 20th century, though the personages are Greek gods, is written in prose, with some blank verse.
*''The Autumn Garden'' (1908)

===Critical works===
*''English Odes'' (1881)
*''Seventeenth Century Studies'' (1883)
*''Life'' of Thomas Gray, whose works he edited (4 vols., 1884)
*''Life of [[William Congreve]]'' (1888)
*[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/009913135 ''A History of Eighteenth Century Literature''] (1889)
*''Gossip in a Library'' (essays about books, 1892)
*''Questions at issue'' (1893)
*[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001111859 ''The Jacobean Poets''] (1894)
*[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100319965 ''Critical Kit-kats''] (1896)
*[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008994045 ''A Short History of Modern English Literature''] (1897)<ref>{{Cite journal|title=Review of ''A Short History of English Literature'' by Edmund Gosse and ''Victorian Literature'' by Clement Shorter|journal=The Athenæum |issue= 3657 |date=27 November 1897 |pages=742–743 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ilpDAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA742|last1=Buckingham |first1=James Silk |last2=Sterling |first2=John |last3=Maurice |first3=Frederick Denison |last4=Stebbing |first4=Henry |last5=Dilke |first5=Charles Wentworth |last6=Hervey |first6=Thomas Kibble |last7=Dixon |first7=William Hepworth |last8=MacColl |first8=Norman |last9=Rendall |first9=Vernon Horace |last10=Murry |first10=John Middleton }}</ref>
*''Life and Letters of Dr [[John Donne]], Dean of St Paul's'' (1899)
* ''Illustrated Record of English Literature'', with Richard Garnett (vols. iii and iv, 1903–1904)
*''[[Jeremy Taylor]]'' (1903, "[[English Men of Letters]]")
*''Life'' of [[Sir Thomas Browne]] (1905)
*[https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007647647 ''French Profiles''] (1905)
*''Portraits and Studies'' (1912)
*''Collected Essays'' (1912)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001202070 ''Three French Moralists''] (1918)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/007698807 ''Malherbe and the Classical Reaction in the Seventeenth Century''] (1920) 
* ''More Books on the Table'' (1923)

===Biography===
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006635811 ''Gray''] (1882)
* ''The Life of [[Philip Henry Gosse]]'', F.R.S. (1890) [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/100290988 online text]
* ''[[Father and Son (Gosse book)|Father and Son]]'' (1907)
* ''The Life of [[Algernon Charles Swinburne]]'' (1917) [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001112871 online text]

===Other===
* ''The Secret of Narcisse. A Romance'' (1892)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/006085574 ''Two Visits to Denmark, 1872, 1874''] (1911)
* ''Inter Arma'' (1916)
* [https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/000393057 ''Some Diversions of a Man of Letters''] (1919)

== References ==
=== Citations ===
{{Reflist}}

=== Sources ===
{{refbegin}}

* {{cite EB1911 |wstitle = Gosse, Edmund |volume = 12 |page = 286 }} and its supplement: {{cite EB1922 |wstitle = Gosse, Edmund |page = 298 |short = x }}
{{refend}}

==Further reading==
* [[A. C. Benson|Benson, A.C.]] (1896). [https://archive.org/stream/essaysbenson00bens#page/292/mode/2up "The Poetry of Edmund Gosse."] In: ''Essays.'' London: William Heinemann, pp.&nbsp;292–309.
* {{cite book |last=Wertheimer|first=Douglas|title=Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography|url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/1495001167?oclcNum=1495001167|year=2024|publisher=Brethren Archivists and Historians Network|isbn=978-1739128326}}

==External links==
{{Library resources box |by=yes |onlinebooks=yes |others=yes |about=yes |viaf=54239311 }}
*{{commonscat-inline}}
*{{wikisource author-inline}}
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* {{Gutenberg author |id=959}}
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Edmund Gosse}}
* {{Librivox author |id=461}}
* [[hdl:10079/fa/beinecke.gosse|Edmund Gosse Collection]]. General Collection. Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
*[https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/architecture/collections1/stone/lords-library/ House of Lords Library by Benjamin Stone - Living Heritage UK Parliament]

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{{DEFAULTSORT:Gosse, Edmund}}
[[Category:1849 births]]
[[Category:1928 deaths]]
[[Category:English librarians]]
[[Category:English literary critics]]
[[Category:Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge]]
[[Category:English LGBTQ poets]]
[[Category:People from De Beauvoir Town]]
[[Category:Knights Bachelor]]
[[Category:Companions of the Order of the Bath]]
[[Category:English people of American descent]]
[[Category:English male poets]]
[[Category:English male non-fiction writers]]
[[Category:19th-century English LGBTQ people]]
[[Category:20th-century English LGBTQ people]]