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.