Product Description

'This book is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs.' Father and Son stands as one of English literature's seminal autobiographies. In it Edmund Gosse recounts, with humour and pathos, his childhood as a member of a Victorian Protestant sect and his struggles to forge his own identity despite the loving control of his father. A key document of the crisis of faith and doubt; a penetrating exploration of the impact of evolutionary science; an astute, well-observed, and moving portrait of the tensions of family life: Father and Son remains a classic of twentieth-century literature. As well as an illuminating introduction, this edition also provides a series of fascinating appendices including extracts from Philip Gosse's Omphalos and his harrowing account of his wife's death from breast cancer.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #290989 in Books
• Published on: 2004-09-09
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Customer Reviews

One of the greatest autobiographies ever written
Edmund Gosse's Father and Son is a haunting and strangely lyrical account of an unhappy childhood that is redeemed by moments of dramatic encounter with the world of nature and the world of books. The description of the newly-widowed Gosse senior's grief-stricken immersion into the secret realms of rock-pools is one of the highlights of all English literature. Michael Newton's sympathetic introduction offers valuable insights into the book's historic and literary contexts, as well as into the emotional density that is achieved by Gosse's prose. The cover, too - featuring William Dyce's Pegwell Bay - is an inspired choice for what remains one of the must-reads of early 20th-century writing.

Interesting but slow
Not a book one should read with nay sense of urgency, as such it's probably a book I'd have enjoyed a whole lot more were I on vacation or in some rural haven. Nevertheless it is an interesting read, the story revolves around a young boys rejection of the religion of his parents. This isn't a particularly virulent ant-religious book, more a gentle debate between two people who have immense affection for one another despite their disagreements. The book has a wry sense of humour and produces some humorous sections. There are some interesting points in the book but one generally has to be prepared to navigate through vast swathes of largely benign childhood to get there.

A brilliant autobiography, but not "nothing but the truth"
This is one of the outstanding works of early twentieth century English literature, and probably one of the best British autobiographies ever written. Edmund Gosse describes his life up to the time when he left home to move back to London to start his career.

His upbringing was unusual, even by mid-Victorian standards. In his infancy, his intensely pious parents shunned all except the equally devout of their own kind, the Plymouth Brethren. His mother died when Edmund was seven, and her dying wish was that Edmund become a minister of their religion. His father then devoted himself, ultimately without success, to realising this wish. Gosse's career in literature brought him into friendship with such as Swinburne, than whom Gosse's father could hardly have imagined a more unsuitable acquaintance.

Gosse does clear justice to the affection within his immediate family. He also presents a balanced view of how far his parents realised their talents. He expresses his respect for their achievements - his mother as an evangelistic writer, and his father as one of the greatest marine biologists of the period. On the other hand, he suggests that their piety may have hampered even greater achievement. He suspects that his mother may have stifled a real talent for writing fiction on purely moral grounds ("because it was not true"), and explains - not without sympathy - how his father opposed Darwin's theory of evolution on purely religious grounds, and lost.

The doubts attaching to Father and Son are not of literary quality, but of accuracy. In the preface, Gosse says that he is writing while his memory is "still perfectly vivid", and that "at only one point has there been any tampering with precise facts". However, Ann Thwaite puts forward a very different view in Glimpses of the Wonderful, her excellent biography of Gosse's father. She quotes Edmund as describing his memory as "like a colander", and she relates several minor and some major events in Father and Son in respect of which Edmund is either remembering inaccurately or is being creative with the truth. The answer probably is - one with which Edmund would probably wryly agree - that there is no absolute truth, only greater or lesser.

The book is not unremitting gloom. There are several anecdotes where Gosse displays his subtle, wicked sense of humour, as seen throughout his career.