Gossip in a Library

Sir Edmund William Gosse C. B. (1849-1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He worked as assistant librarian at the British Museum from 1867, and in 1875 became a translator at the Board of Trade, a post which he held until 1904. In the meantime, he published his first volume of poetry, On Viol and Flute (1873) and a work of criticism, Studies in the Literature of Northern Europe (1879). He became, in the 1880s, one of the most important art critics dealing with sculpture. From 1904, he was librarian of the House of Lords, where he exercised considerable influence. He wrote for the Sunday Times, and can take credit for introducing Ibsen's work to the British public. His most famous book is the autobiographical Father and A Study of Two Temperaments (1907), about his troubled relationship with his Plymouth Brethren father, Philip Gosse. His other works Gossip in a Library (1891), In Russet and Silver (1894), Henrik Ibsen (1907), Three French Moralists and The Gallantry of France (1918) and Some Diversions of a Man of Letters (1919).