EDMUND GOSSE

Numerous and varied as have been the analyses of Ibsens works published, in all languages, since the completion of his writings, there exists no biographical study which brings together, on a general plan, what has been recorded of his adventures as an author. Hitherto the only accepted Life of Ibsen has been Et literaert Livsbillede, published in 1888 by Henrik Jaeger; of this an English translation was issued in 1890. Henrik Jaeger (who must not be confounded with the novelist, Hans Henrik Jaeger) was a lecturer and dramatic critic, residing near Bergen, whose book would possess little value had he not succeeded in persuading Ibsen to give him a good deal of valuable information respecting his early life in that city. In its own day, principally on this account, Jaegers volume was useful, supplying a large number of facts which were new to the public. But the advance of Ibsens activity, and the increase of knowledge since his death, have so much extended and modified the poets history that Et literaert Livsbillede has become obsolete.The principal authorities of which I have made use in the following pages are the minute bibliographical Oplysninger of J. B. Halvorsen, marvels of ingenious labor, continued after Halvorsens death by Sten Konow (1901); the Letters of Henrik Ibsen, published in two volumes, by H. Koht and J. Elias, in 1904, and now issued in an English translation (Hodder & Stoughton); the recollections and notes of various friends, published in the periodicals of Scandinavia and Germany after his death; T. Blancs Et Bidrag til den Ibsenskte Digtnings Scenehistorie (1906); and, most of all, the invaluable Samliv med Ibsen (1906) of Johan Paulsen. This last-mentioned writer aspires, in measure, to be Ibsens Boswell, and his book is a series of chapters reminiscent of the dramatists talk and manners, chiefly during those central years of his life which he spent in Germany.

At birth Edmund Gosse was dedicated to 'the Service of the Lord'. His parents were Plymouth Brethren. After his mother's death Gosse was brought up in stifling isolation by his father, a marine biologist whose faith overcame his reason when confronted by Darwin's theory of evolution. Father and Son is also the record of Gosse's struggle to 'fashion his inner life for himself' - a record of whose full and subversive implications the author was unaware, as Peter Abbs notes in his Introduction. First published anonymously in 1907, Father and Son was immediately acclaimed for its courage in flouting the conventions of Victorian autobiography and is still a moving account of self-discovery.