Father and Son

This is a bibliography page, concerning a work to which reference is made elsewhere in this guide.

Gosse, Edmund (1907) Father and Son: a study of two temperaments, London, W. Heinemann; New York, C. Scribner’s sons.

This book has been reprinted often. It was originally published anonymously.

The "two temperaments" are those of the influential critic Sir Edmund Gosse (1849–1928), the author, and his father, Philip Henry Gosse FRS (1810–1888), a naturalist of distinction and a member of the Plymouth Brethren. The two became estranged over religion, in particular over Philip's Omphalos, in which the father argued that God had created the earth complete with fossils (prochronism) to make it seem as old as geologists were beginning to believe it was, in disagreement with the literal reading of Genesis that he as a devout fundamentalist had to follow.