Father and Son [Paperback]

Edmund Gosse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1963

At birth, Edmund Gosse was dedicated to 'the Service of the Lord'. His parents were Plymouth Brethren. After his mother's death, Gosse was brought up in stifling isolation by his father, a marine biologist whose faith overcame his reason when confronted by Darwin's theory of evolution. "Father and Son" is also the record of Gosse's struggle to 'fashion his inner life for himself' - a record of whose full and subversive implications the author was unaware, as Peter Abbs notes in his introduction. First published anonymously in 1907, "Father and Son" was immediately acclaimed for its courage in flouting the conventions of Victorian autobiography and is still a moving account of self-discovery.

--This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The era in which faith and reason conflicted in a profound manner seems far away, and perhaps even a bit incomprehensible, to citizens of the modern world. Most of us take for granted our right to choose the life of the mind over that of the spirit without feeling remorse. At the very least, we've learned that the two need not be mutually exclusive. But this is hard-won ease, born of a conflict that began with the Victorians. Edmund Gosse's Father and Son (1907) traces his own reckoning--as well as that of his father, the eminent British zoologist Philip Gosse--with the clash. His story is, as he declares, "The diagnosis of a dying Puritanism."

The only Puritanism that dies here, however, is the author's. His parents were Christian fundamentalists and as a result, young Edmund was denied interaction with other children as well as all variety of fictional tales. "Here was perfect purity," Gosse writes, "perfect intrepidity, perfect abnegation; yet there was also narrowness, isolation, and absence of perspective, let it boldly be admitted, an absence of humanity." Despite all of this, the child maintained his sense of humor, which adds much levity to a tale of such potentially grim proportions.

When Edmund was 8, his mother died of cancer, leaving him the care of a man in whom "sympathetic imagination ... was singularly absent." Philip Gosse held on to his faith in God above all else--so much so, in fact, that when evolutionary theory was announced to the world, he dismissed it entirely because it discounted the book of Genesis. Little by little, Edmund began to chafe against the traditions he had inherited. By the age of 11, he already saw himself "imprisoned for ever in the religious system which had caught me and would whurl my helpless spirit." At this point he believed his fate was sealed and went through the motions of piety. It is not until he goes off to boarding school, and discovers the Greeks and Romantic poetry, that he slowly chooses his own path. Eventually he comes to realize that he and his father "walked in opposite hemispheres of the soul." Their split encapsulates a particular moment in history but also embodies their destiny: "one was born to fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward." --Melanie Rehak --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Review

Autobiography by Edmund Gosse, published anonymously in 1907. Considered a minor masterpiece, Father and Son is a sensitive study of the clash between religious fundamentalism and intellectual curiosity. The book recounts Gosse's austere childhood, particularly his relationship to his father, the eminent zoologist Philip Henry Gosse. In the conflict between his rigid fundamentalism and mounting scientific knowledge, the elder Gosse rejected science for his faith. The younger Gosse, with his vast thirst for knowledge of the broader world, was finally unable to accept his father's beliefs. -- The Merriam-Webster Encyclopedia of Literature --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 250 pages
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc (January 1963)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393001954
• ISBN-13: 978-0393001952
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,611,577 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A justly celebrated memoir of the Victorian age, December 14, 2001

By 

Robert Moore (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Paperback)

Edmund Gosse's FATHER AND SON is legitimately considered one of the highpoints of Victorian autobiography. As has been noted by others, the book recounts the relationship between Edmund Gosse and his father, a member of the Christian sect generally known as Plymouth Brethren, but who was also a member of the Royal Society and one of the foremost marine biologists of his time. The narrative tends to break down into a number of definite segments: the author's birth until the death of his mother; life with his father until the time of the publishing of Darwin's THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES; the move of the Gosses to the coast of England; and young Gosse's schooling and gradual growth away from the religious teachings and expectations he had received from his parents.

A number of powerful impressions evolve over the course of the telling. First and foremost, one is left with an impression of how overwhelmingly Gosse's childhood was stripped of nearly all fun by his parents' puritanical and stern religion. Gosse's father is presented not as a cruel, vicious, and hypocritical. Instead, he is shown as a caring parent, a completely earnest practitioner of his religion, but fanatically concerned to eliminate all activities that do not lead to increased religious devotion and moral seriousness. Unfortunately, this resulted for Gosse in a childhood from which all possibility of play and fun and delight had been eliminated. Near the end of the book, I was left wondering if Gosse would have been inclined to leave Christianity if he had just had more fun as a kid.

The section of the book dealing with his father's reaction to Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES was for me the most interesting part of the book. His father's scientific standing was such that Darwin actually contacted him before the publication of his theories, and asked his response. Gosse notes that his father instantly understood that the scientific evidence clearly supported Darwin's theory. His reading of Genesis, however, indicated to him that the world was created in six days, which precluded the scenario articulated by Darwin. He therefore concluded that god created the earth in six days, but in so doing implanted fossils and geologic strata into the earth. In this way, his father was able to explain both the apparent evidence for eons long development of the earth and homo sapiens and yet retain his belief in the belief that Genesis taught a six day literal creation.

There are any of a number of reasons to read this work. It is a classic autobiography, an important source for one response to the reception of Darwin, and a magnificent evocation of puritanical religious life during the Victorian age. Most of all, it is a disturbing account of the distortive effect that intolerant and narrow-minded religious upbringing can have on an individual.

13 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An ex-exclusive brethren perspective, March 12, 2000

By 

Richard K. Wyman - See all my reviews

This review is from: Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Paperback)

Father and Son is the story of two men, Edmund Gosse (the writer) and his father, Philip Gosse. Philip was a biologist, a contemporary of Charles Darwin. The story covers a period of about twenty years, from 1849 to about 1870, during which Edmund grew from infancy to university student. Edmund Gosse became a well-known English man of letters. Among his works is a biography of his father.

Speaking of his parents' faith, he writes ...

They called themselves 'the Brethren', simply; a title enlarged by the world outside into 'Plymouth Brethren'.

Given that there is no mention of John Darby in the book, and that the book follows the 1848-49 schism that resulted in open and exclusive brethren, and that the assemblies described in the book seem essentially autonomous, I assume Gosse is referring to the 'open brethren' when he speaks of Plymouth Brethren.

Readers raised among any of the groups that have evolved from the Brethren groups that began in Dublin in the 1820's will find much familiar material.

The book is worth reading at least twice. I've just read it again after owning it for a year and am struck again at how well he describes life among the brethren and the incredible stress parents can put upon their children in the name of faith.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An endearingly human work, August 20, 2001

By 

Anglo Jackson (London United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Father and Son: A Study of Two Temperaments (Classic, 20th-Century, Penguin) (Paperback)

There are few works of autobiography that lay bare the author's soul as convincingly and seeringly as this. In an astonishing tour de force Edmund Gosse, by then a substantial Edwardian homme des lettres, remembers his childhood and adolescence in his father's house and his indoctrination into a Victorian, evangelical, creationist, scientific, wilfully unliterary way of life and his growth out of this via Shakespeare, Marlowe and some decidedly morbid poems. What is so astounding about this book is the kindness with which Gosse remembers his past which is always present and never tempered with dishonesty. There are moments when we cannot but find fault with Gosse senior (when he writes to his son in London invoking his mother's memory to try and force him back to the brethren) but with the Edmund Gosse painting so loving a picture of him we could never see him as, for example, the father of Samuel Butler's "The Way of All Flesh" (a great and loosely autobiographical novel which is often metioned alongside "Father and Son" as expressing the same painful differences between the evagelical Victorians and their children) - that is desicated, corrupted, and malicious. There is one killingly funny moment where Edmund Gosse reads from Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" to his stepmother and the idea of the straight laced little saint reading aloud about Leander "His bodie was as straight as Circes wand,/ Jove might have sipt out Nectar from his hand./ Even as delicious meat is to the tast,/ So was his necke in touching, and surpast/ The white of Pelops shoulder." to the god fearing wife of his god fearing father, minister to the brethren, and not expecting a strange reaction, is as bizarre as it is amusing. A most endearingly human work most warmly recommended.