Showing results by author "Edmund Gosse" in All Categories

Everyone has a swipe at their parents and the way they were brought up at some point in their lives. Very few of us exact revenge to the extent that Edmund Gosse did upon his father in this superbly funny, agonising account of a very strange childhood. The subtitle of the book is A Study of Two Temperaments, and these were temperaments not destined to get on. Gosse, Sr. was an eminent naturalist and zoologist and a keen follower of the Plymouth Brethren.

Hedda and George Tesman have just returned from their six-month honeymoon tour of the Tyrol. George, a studious and somewhat dull academic has spent most of the time continuing his research. Hedda, the daughter of the celebrated, aristocratic General Gabler, recently deceased, has been accustomed to the finer things in life. She is already bored in her marriage and diverts herself with her father's pistols and the attentions of family friend, Judge Brack.

"This story is the record of a struggle between two temperaments, two consciences and almost two epochs. It ended, as was inevitable, in disruption. Of the two human beings here described, one was born to fly backward, the other could not help being carried forward. The affection of these two persons was assailed by forces in comparison with which the changes that health or fortune or place introduce are as nothing.