A Bibliography of the First Editions of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S.

This is the privately printed book that was superseded by the Freeman and Wertheimer bibliography.

I love this book for the love and care with which it was researched, prepared and crafted by Peter Stageman. It is the pioneering work of an enthusiast. This is the cloth-backed edition, of which 450 copies were available to purchase.

Sacheverell Sitwell, who wrote one of the introductory essays to Stageman’s bilbliography, thought of Gosse more as an artist than a natural historian.

“...we are dealing with someone who, we hope it not cruel to say, took to his religion as de Quincey or Baudelaire clung to opium, and remained lifelong slave to his obsession. That pair of names is mentioned by way of implied compliment because I am so certain that Edmund Gosse was right in saying that his father should be looked upon, primarily, more as an artist than as a man of science.”

The book.

Peter Stageman, A Bibliography of the First Editions of Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S. with introductory essays by Sacheverell Sitwell and Geoffrey Lapage, The Golden Head Press, Ltd., Cambridge, 1955. Edition limited to 429 copies in cloth originally at 2 guineas.

  Hand coloured frontispiece

© John Dunn.