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Sir Edmund William Gosse (; 21 September 184916 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, Toru Dutt, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce. He also lectured in English literature at Cambridge University.
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. 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.Brennan, Michael G., Evelyn Waugh: Fictions, Faith and Family, Bloomsbury, 2013, p. xvi.
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 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. 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.
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 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. Arthur Griffith with James Joyce and W.B. Yeats - Liberating Ireland Anthony J. Jordan, Westport books 2013, p, 106.
His most famous book is the autobiographical 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 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. 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 William Heinemann, includes over 50 individual poems and essays.
Gosse was the literary editor for the 1911 edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. From 1898 he edited the Short Histories of the Literatures of the World book series (Heinemann, London) which was co-published in the United States by D. Appleton and Company, New York. Short Histories of the Literatures of the World (Heinemann), publishinghistory.com. Retrieved 28 December 2025.
They were married more than 53 years and they had three children: Emily Teresa ("Tessa") (1877-1951),R. B. Freeman and D. Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Bibliography (Folkestone, Kent: Dawson, 1980), p. 130. Philip Henry George (1879–1959) who became a physician (but is probably best known as the author of The Pirates' Who's Who (1924)) and Sylvia Gosse (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." Toward Stonewall: Homosexuality and Society in the Modern Western World. Nicholas C. Edsal, page 106 Essays on Gay Literature. Stuart Kellogg, page 87
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