Edmund Gosse
Sir Edmund William Gosse CB (/ɡɒs/; 21 September 1849 – 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 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, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce. He also lectured in English literature at Cambridge University.
Early life[edit]
Gosse was the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.[1] His father was a naturalist and his mother an illustrator who published a number of books of poetry. Both were deeply committed to a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren. 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 own 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, which has been described as the first psychological biography. 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."[2]
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.[3] 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.[4]
Personal life[edit]
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).[6]
They were married more than 53 years and they had three children: Emily Teresa ("Tessa") (1877-1951),[13] Philip Henry George (1879–1959) who became a physician (but is probably best known as the author of The Pirates' Who's Who (1924)[14][15]) and 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."[16][17]
Honours[edit]
Gosse was named a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1912.[18] He was knighted in 1925.[19]
