Gosse, Edmund William (1849-1928)

English writer and critic. His strict Victorian upbringing is reflected in his masterly autobiographical work Father and Son (published anonymously in 1907). His father was a member of the Plymouth Brethren, a Christian fundamentalist sect that rejected the evolutionary ideas of Darwin. As a literary critic and biographer, he was responsible for introducing the works of the Norwegian dramatist Henrik Ibsen to England.

Gosse was born in London. He worked as a librarian at the British Museum from 1865-75. He became translator to the Board of Trade in 1875 and in 1884 lecturer on English literature at Trinity College, Cambridge. He was librarian to the House of Lords from 1904 to 1919. He was influential as a critic and an authority on French and Scandinavian literature. His chief service to letters was his introduction of modern European writers to English readers. In early manhood he was a friend of Robert Louis Stevenson, with whom he exchanged many interesting letters. Selected Essays was published in 1928.

His chief works, characterized by their lucidity, include Studies in the Literatures of Northern Europe (1879), From Shakespeare to Pope (1885), History of Modern English Literature (1897), and works on Walter Raleigh (1886), William Congreve (1888), Robert Browning (1890), John Donne (1899), Coventry Patmore (1905), Thomas Browne (1905), Henrik Ibsen (1908), and Algernon Swinburne (1917).

He also produced two volumes of poetry. He was knighted in 1925.