Gosse, Edmund

Edmund William Gosse (1849–1928) was a man of letters and son of the natural historian and proto‐creationist Philip Gosse. He did not go to university because his father was wary of a secular environment and the influence of young male students. But Gosse nevertheless became an influential literary critic and the author of fiction, poetry, and some remarkable biographies: his autobiographical Father and Son (1907) and the biographies of his famous father (1890) and the metaphysical poet John Donne (1899). In 1884 he delivered the prestigious Clark lectures at Cambridge. However, their publication revealed a number of unforgivable mistakes which were at once attacked by his former friend John Churton Collins. Gosse was skilled in foreign languages and advocated Scandinavian and Dutch literature. As a Francophile he was also a middleman between British and French culture.