Father and Son (1907) is a memoir

Memoir

A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...

 by poet and critic Edmund Gosse

Edmund Gosse

Sir Edmund William Gosse CB was an English poet, author and critic; the son of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes.-Early life:...

, which he subtitled "a study of two temperaments."
Edmund had previously published a biography of his father,
originally published anonymously.
The book describes Edmund's early years in an exceptionally devout Plymouth Brethren

Plymouth Brethren

The Plymouth Brethren is a conservative, Evangelical Christian movement, whose history can be traced to Dublin, Ireland, in the late 1820s. Although the group is notable for not taking any official "church name" to itself, and not having an official clergy or liturgy, the title "The Brethren," is...

 home. His mother, who died early and painfully of breast cancer

Breast cancer

Breast cancer is cancer originating from breast tissue, most commonly from the inner lining of milk ducts or the lobules that supply the ducts with milk. Cancers originating from ducts are known as ductal carcinomas; those originating from lobules are known as lobular carcinomas...

, was a writer of Christian tracts

Tract (literature)

A tract is a literary work, and in current usage, usually religious in nature. The notion of what constitutes a tract has changed over time. By the early part of the 21st century, these meant small pamphlets used for religious and political purposes, though far more often the former. They are...

. His father, Philip Henry Gosse

Philip Henry Gosse

Philip Henry Gosse was an English naturalist and popularizer of natural science, virtually the inventor of the seawater aquarium, and a painstaking innovator in the study of marine biology...

, was an influential, though largely self-taught, invertebrate zoologist

Invertebrate zoology

Invertebrate zoology is the biological discipline that consists of the study of invertebrate animals, i.e. animals without a backbone...

 and student of marine biology

Marine biology

Marine biology is the scientific study of organisms in the ocean or other marine or brackish bodies of water. Given that in biology many phyla, families and genera have some species that live in the sea and others that live on land, marine biology classifies species based on the environment rather...

 who, after his wife's death, took Edmund to live in Devon

Devon

Devon is a large county in southwestern England. The county is sometimes referred to as Devonshire, although the term is rarely used inside the county itself as the county has never been officially "shired", it often indicates a traditional or historical context.The county shares borders with...

. The book focuses on the relationship between a sternly religious father who rejects the new evolutionary theories of his scientific colleague Charles Darwin

Charles Darwin

Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...

 and the son's gradual coming of age and rejection of his father's fundamentalist religion.

As Michael Newton, Lecturer in English, University College London

University College London

University College London is a public research university located in London, United Kingdom and the oldest and largest constituent college of the federal University of London...

, has written, the book is "a brilliant, and often comic, record of the small diplomacies of home: those indirections, omissions, insincerities, and secrecies that underlie family relationships." "[B]rilliantly written, and full of gentle wit," the book is "an unmatched social document, preserving for us whole the experience of childhood in a Protestant sect in the Victorian period....Above all, it is one of our best accounts of adolescence

Adolescence

Adolescence is a transitional stage of physical and mental human development generally occurring between puberty and legal adulthood , but largely characterized as beginning and ending with the teenage stage...

, particularly for those who endured...a religious upbringing."

Although Edmund Gosse prefaces the book with the claim that the incidents described are sober reality, a modern biography of Philip Henry Gosse by Ann Thwaite

Ann Thwaite

Ann Thwaite has written five major biographies. "AA Milne: His Life" was the Whitbread Biography of the Year, 1990. "Edmund Gosse: A Literary Landscape" was described by John Carey as "magnificent - one of the finest literary biographies of our time"...

 presents him not as a repressive tyrant who cruelly scrutinized the state of his son's soul but as a gentle and thoughtful person of "delicacy and inner warmth," much unlike his son's portrait. Biographer and critic, D. J. Taylor

D. J. Taylor

David John Taylor is a British critic, novelist and biographer. After attending school in Norwich, he read Modern History at St John's College, Oxford, and has received the 2003 Whitbread Biography Award for his biography of George Orwell. His novel Derby Day was longlisted for the 2011 Man Booker...

 described the latter as "horribly partial" and noted that "the supposedly sequestered, melancholic pattern of [Edmund] Gosse's London and Devonshire childhood is repeatedly proved to have contained great affection, friends, fun and even light reading."

Editions

Source: Library of Congress

Library of Congress

The Library of Congress is the research library of the United States Congress, de facto national library of the United States, and the oldest federal cultural institution in the United States. Located in three buildings in Washington, D.C., it is the largest library in the world by shelf space and...

• New York, C. Scribner’s sons, 1907
• London, W. Heinemann, 1907
• New York, Oxford University Press [1934]
• London : Heinemann, 1958
• Boston, Houghton Mifflin, [1965, c1907]
• London, Heinemann Educational, 1970, ISBN 0-435-13350-0
• London ; New York : Oxford University Press, 1974, ISBN 0-19-255401-8
• Oxford [England] ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-284066-5

In popular culture

Father and Son partially inspired the 1988 novel Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda

Oscar and Lucinda is a novel by Peter Carey which won the 1988 Booker Prize, the 1989 Miles Franklin Award, and was shortlisted for The Best of the Booker.-Plot introduction:...

by Peter Carey, that won the Booker Prize the same year, and the 1989 Miles Franklin Award

Miles Franklin Award

The Miles Franklin Literary Award is an annual literary prize for the best Australian ‘published novel or play portraying Australian life in any of its phases’. The award was set up according to the will of Miles Franklin , who is best known for writing the Australian classic My Brilliant Career ...

.

The book was the inspiration for Dennis Potter

Dennis Potter

Dennis Christopher George Potter was an English dramatist, best known for The Singing Detective. His widely acclaimed television dramas mixed fantasy and reality, the personal and the social. He was particularly fond of using themes and images from popular culture.-Biography:Dennis Potter was born...

's 1976 television drama Where Adam Stood

Where Adam Stood

Where Adam Stood is a television play by Dennis Potter, first broadcast on BBC2 in 1976. It is a free adaptation of Edmund Gosse's autobiographical book Father and Son .-Synopsis:...

, starring Alan Badel

Alan Badel

Alan Fernand Badel was a distinguished English stage actor who also appeared frequently in the cinema, radio and television and was noted for his richly textured voice which was once described as "the sound of tears".-Early life:...

as Philip Gosse.