Father and Son (Oxford English Memoirs & Travels S.) - Hardcover

Gosse, Edmund

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0192554018 ISBN 13: 9780192554017

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1974

Synopsis

"Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments" (1907) is a memoir by poet and critic Edmund Gosse, which he subtitled "a study of two temperaments." The book describes Edmund's early years in an exceptionally devout Plymouth Brethren home. His mother, who died early and painfully of breast cancer, was a writer of Christian tracts. His father, Philip Henry Gosse, was an influential, though largely self-taught, invertebrate zoologist and student of marine biology who, after his wife's death, took Edmund to live in Devon. "Father & Son" focuses on the father's response to the new evolutionary theories, especially those of his scientific colleague Charles Darwin, and Edmund's gradual rejection of both his father and his father's fundamentalist religion. As Michael Newton, Lecturer in English, University College London, has written, the book is "a brilliant, and often comic, record of the small diplomacies of home: those indirections, omissions, insincerities, and secrecies that underlie family relationships." "Brilliantly written, and full of gentle wit," "Father & Son: A Study of Two Temperaments" is "an unmatched social document, preserving for us whole the experience of childhood in a Protestant sect in the Victorian period....Above all, it is one of our best accounts of adolescence, particularly for those who endured...a religious upbringing."

About this title

About the Author

Sir Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928) was an English poet, author and critic; the son of zoologist Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes. In 1870 he co-authored Madrigals, Songs and Sonnets with John Blaikie. As well as composing poetry, Gosse’s passion for reading led him to study European literature, and he introduced Ibsen to the English public. Father and Son was published anonymously in 1907.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1974
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0192554018
• ISBN 13: 9780192554017
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 220
• Editor: Hepburn James