Sir Edmund William GosseCB (/ɡɒs/; 21 September 1849 – 16 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a smallProtestant sect, thePlymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhood in the bookFather and Son has been described as the first psychological biography.
His friendship with the sculptorHamo Thornycroft inspired a successful career as a historian of late-Victorian sculpture. His translations ofHenrik Ibsen helped to promote that playwright in England, and he encouraged the careers ofSarojini Naidu,Toru Dutt,W. B. Yeats andJames Joyce. He also lectured in English literature atCambridge University.
Gosse was the son ofPhilip Henry Gosse andEmily Bowes.[1] His father was a naturalist and one of the chief figures among Brethren,[2] his mother was a published poet, author, and leading religious tract writer.[3] Both were deeply committed to a small Protestant sect, known by the misnomerPlymouth Brethren.[4] His childhood was initially happy as they spent their summers inDevon, where his father was developing the ideas that gave rise to the craze for themarine 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 bookFather and Son, which has been described as the first psychological biography.[citation needed] At the age of 18 and working in theBritish Museum in London, he broke away from his father's influence in a dramaticcoming 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."[5]
Eliza Gosse's brother George Brightwen was the husband ofEliza Brightwen née Elder (1830–1906), a naturalist and author, whose first book was published in 1890.[6] After Eliza Brightwen's death, Edmund Gosse arranged for the publication of her two posthumous works,Last Hours with Nature (1908) andEliza 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 ofArthur Waugh and grandmother to the writersAlec Waugh andEvelyn Waugh.[7]
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Gosse started his career as assistant librarian at theBritish Museum from 1867 alongside the songwriterTheo Marzials,[8] a post whichCharles Kingsley helped his father obtain for him. An early book of poetry published with a friendJohn Arthur Blaikie gave him an introduction to thePre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. Trips to Denmark and Norway in 1872–74, where he visitedHans Christian Andersen andFrederik Paludan-Müller, led to publishing success with reviews ofHenrik Ibsen andBjørnstjerne Bjørnson in theCornhill Magazine.[9]He was soon reviewing Scandinavian literature in a variety of publications. He became acquainted withAlfred, Lord Tennyson and friends withRobert Browning,Algernon Charles Swinburne,Thomas Hardy andHenry 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 andRobert 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 theBoard of Trade, a post which he held until 1904 and gave him time for his writing[10] and enabled him to marry and start a family.
From 1884 to 1890, Gosse lectured in English literature atTrinity 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.[11] 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 theSaturday Review) with an interest spurred on by his intimate friendship with the sculptorHamo Thornycroft. Gosse would eventually write the first history of the renaissance of late-Victorian sculpture in 1894 in a four-part series forThe Art Journal, dubbing the movement theNew Sculpture. In 1902 he published an English translation ofAlexandre Dumas filsLady of the Camellias.[12]
In 1904, he became the librarian of theHouse of Lords Library, where he exercised considerable influence till he retired in 1914. He wrote for theSunday Times, and was an expert onThomas Gray,William Congreve,John Donne,Jeremy Taylor, andCoventry Patmore. He can also take credit for introducingHenrik Ibsen's work to the British public. Gosse andWilliam Archer collaborated in translatingHedda Gabler andThe Master Builder; those two translations were performed throughout the 20th century. Gosse and Archer, along withGeorge 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.[13]
His most famous book is the autobiographicalFather and Son, about his troubled relationship with hisPlymouth Brethren father, Philip, which was dramatised for television byDennis Potter. Published anonymously in 1907, this followed a biography he had written of his father as naturalist, when he was urged byGeorge 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.[14] In later life, he became a formative influence onSiegfried 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 asAlgernon Charles Swinburne,John Addington Symonds, andAndré Gide.
His bookThe Autumn Garden, which was published in 1908 by the London publisherWilliam Heinemann, includes over 50 individual poems and essays.[15]
Gosse was the literary editor for the 1911 edition of theEncyclopædia Britannica.[16]
Gosse married Ellen Epps (23 March 1850 – 29 August 1929), a young painter in the Pre-Raphaelite circle, who was the daughter ofGeorge 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 ofLawrence 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 ofJohn Epps and who had made his fortune in cocoa).[9]
They were married more than 53 years and they had three children: Emily Teresa ("Tessa") (1877-1951),[17] Philip Henry George (1879–1959) who became a physician (but is probably best known as the author ofThe Pirates' Who's Who (1924)[18][19]) andLaura 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 toJohn Addington Symonds, around the time the latter was working onA 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."[20][21]
Gosse was named a Companion of theOrder of the Bath (CB) in 1912.[22] He wasknighted in 1925.[23]
This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Lee, Sidney, ed. (1912). "Brightwen, Eliza".Dictionary of National Biography (2nd supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 255–256.
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