Edmund Gosse

Edmund Gosse, the son of the English naturalist, Philip Goose, was born in London on 21st September, 1849.

Educated privately, Gosse became assistant librarian in the British Museum in 1867. He continued to write poetry and in 1873 he published On Viol and Flute.

In 1875 Gosse became a translator at the Board of Trade. Later he worked as the librarian to the House of Lords. Gosse wrote for the Saturday Review and the Sunday Times and developed a reputation as a fine literary critic. In 1879 he published Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe. This was followed by Seventeenth-Century Studies (1897).

Gosse promoted the plays of Henrik Ibsen and wrote about William Congreve (1888), John Donne (1899), Jeremy Taylor (1904) and Sir Thomas Browne (1905). However, Gosse is best known for his autobiographical Father and Son (1907) in which he describes his puritanical father's domineering character. In 1911 he published Collected Poems.

Gosse retired on the eve of the First World War. He continued to write about literature and produced books on Algernon Charles Swinburne (1917) and François de Malherbe (1920). He was also a supporter of the works of Siegfried Sassoon.

Edmund Gosse died on 16th May, 1928.