Father and Son

'The classic of memoir of inter-generational strife with an afterword from author of The Essex Serpent Sarah Perry and an introduction from Anthony Quinn. Subtitled a study of two temperaments' Edmund Gosse's childhood memoir tells the often fractious often comic story of Gosse's relationship with his authoritarian father. A pioneering naturalist and marine biologist Philip Henry Gosse's strictly religious worldview is brought into crisis by the discoveries of Charles Darwin and the death of his wife - and Edmund's mother - Emily. As Edmund breaks away from his father's influence the evolution from one epoch to the next is described in all of its struggle humour and glory.