Edmund GosseFather and Son (Oxford World's Classics)

Edmund Gosse's father was a self-taught marine biologist and his mother, a poet and illustrator, but the center of their lives was their fundamentalist faith. They were Plymouth Brethren and were devoted to this fundamentalist Christian sect. Edmund was their only child and this is how he describes their life together: "For over three years after their marriage, neither of my parents left London for a single day, not being able to afford to travel. They received scarcely any visitors, never ate a meal away from home, never spent an evening in social intercourse abroad. At night they discussed theology, read aloud to one another, or translated scientific brochures from French or German. It sounds a terrible life of pressure and deprivation, and that it was physically unwholesome there can be no shadow of a doubt. But their commitment was complete and unfeigned." Gosse, who eventually became a poet, critic and memoirist was not allowed to read fiction in this household. Fiction was made up. It was a lie and therefore a sin. This is particularly interesting as his mother enjoyed making up stories as a child and was able to hold an audience rapt as she told them. The family had little to do with people outside their religious sect and only decided to subscribe to a newspaper once England became engage in the Crimean War. Gosse's mother died when he was 8 of breast cancer and his father remarried a woman with whom young Edmund got along very well. But a rift with his father continues to grow. When Edmund brings home a volume of poetry, his father burns it. His stepmother asks her husband's permission to introduce Edmund to Sir Walter Scott's Waverly novels No dice. Gosse's father who found great comfort and satisfaction in his scientific work is dealt a blow when Darwin publishes "The Origin of the Species" because he cannot reconcile his literal interpretation of the Bible with Darwin's theory. He published Omphalos, a book that argued that the world was created with all it's species all at once. It was dismissed by almost everyone as a preposterous idea. Though Gosse says that this destroyed his father, indications are that his father continued to lecture and publish. Father and Son is worth reading for Gosse's close attention to his own development (his understanding that his father was fallible, his belated delight in literature and his ability to become for lack of another phrase, "his own person." His literary style is somewhat formal but a pleasure to read

*I got turned on to this book when I found it on one of Nick Hornby's list of faves*The book fails to achieve what it hoped to: to find the seeds of Gosse's later rebellion in his early youth. We spend about two-thirds of the book there, looking. Gosse keeps plodding on, expecting to find the answer himself. But we don't. We also don't get a convincing portrait of the father. How did he come to Botany, what teacher led him to that worldly path, what was the joy he found there? Gosse sr. came from money, what was his class-consciousness? What was is that led his mother and father to convert to the Plymouth Brethren, and descend the social ladder. Gosse sees himself and his family as genteel - needs discussion. What kind of earnest Christianity survived Gosse's youthful rebellion?I blame some of the author's inability to address central questions on his elaborate and academic style. His long sentences, aiming to impress us, actually get in the way of his own search for truth and our desire to understand his path.Here is an example of one of the many sentences I was forced to read several times: "In the midst of this, materially, the hardest moment of their lives, when I was nine years old, and there was a question of our leaving London, my mother recorded in her secret notes:"

This is a beautifully written memoir of childhood. Yet, Henry James described the author as having a "gift for the inaccurate", and the accuracy of this book is disputed. Edmund Gosse outlined a strict, if not bleak, upbringing in a Plymouth Brethren home in the midst of the nineteenth century by his two intellectually gifted parents, Emily and Philip Henry Gosse. His mother wrote religious pamphlets and his father was a famous naturalist, who was unable to accept Darwin's theory of natural selection. The suffocating earnestness of a strict upbringing to an artistic child is sensitively drawn as well as the difficult separation of any child from the deep desires of a powerful parent. It was well received in part in the early twentieth century because it outlined so vividly the generational crisis of faith which divided many Victorian and Edwardian families; now it seems to echo contemporary conflicts between fundamentalist Christians and modern scientists. However, one should also read Ann Thwaite's biography of the father, "Glimpses of the Wonderful" (she also wrote a prize winning biography of the son) which outlines a different story of the father's character and relation to the natural world.

Astutely and honestly written biography and autobiography of the development of a father and son relationship and of an independent soul. Really more an autobiography since it is by a man reflecting on what he understood about his father as a child. Still I imagine any person differentiating as an adult would enjoy the book. I would list it among my all time favorites. If nothing else it is a worthy commentary on small town life in England at the time. And certainly food for reflection for any parent hoping to engage their child in spiritual awareness. In this case things didn't turn out at all as the father thought.

The restrained and ruthless account of a coming of age story told from the son's perspective that is ultimately tragic as it is liberating. It is a parable as profound as the prodigal son parable told by Christ, only its antithesis, that of a father's love for his only son crippled by the father’s rigid faith. For those who wrestle with age old conflicts between faith and reason set up by the Enlightenment project as uncompromising alternatives, this book's for you. The ending is necessarily and masterfully abrupt!

A boring and slow moving memoir I could not finish.

A wonderful story.

Wonderful history of how a son develops his own identity in spite of a domineering and controlling but loving father.

A famous memoir by a once important man of letters. The edition is well-printed and -annotated. One of the most affecting documents in the book is the note in which Gosse Senior harrowingly describes his wife's illness, suffering and death. Gosse Jr is careful - over-cautiously so, perhaps - to paint a rounded portrait of his evidently rather brilliant father (however unbalanced he plainly believes him to have been). The reader ends up having a great admiration and affection for the Father, and wondering what Tennyson, Browning et al must have seen in the son, whose writing, while certainly deft and workmanlike, is rather bland.

While it is years since I first read this autobiography and was impressed with it as a piece of writing and historically as a very particular view of aspects of mid-Victorian life I have purchased another pb. copy with a very interesting and helpful introduction which contextualises the book in an intelligent and stimulating manner.

This is a fascinating insight into the relationship between a son and his obsessively religious parents. In fact it was hard to put this book down - especially as there were religious fanatics in my own family! But even without the religious aspect the role of the parents, especially the father, is particularly disturbing.Highly recommended.

I was surprised that I enjoyed this book so much. The language was beautifully precise, some may say pedantic. The descriptions were evocative and moving. It is about a boy growing up with a loving but rigidly fundamentalist Plymouth Brethren father who as a scientist had trouble denying his colleague Darwin. There are some laugh out loud moments and I thoroughly recommend it.

I bought this for someone who has yet to read it,Slightly venerable appearance .Can we please stop using plastic wrapping immediately? (Hence only 4 stars