Philip Henry Gosse (; 6 April 1810 – 23 August 1888), known to his friends as Henry,John P. Hodges, "Mode of address of the nineteenth-century naturalist P.H. Gosse", Annals of Natural History vol. 38, April 2011, 172-4 was an English naturalist, populariser of natural science, prolific author,Freeman, Richard B. and Douglas Wertheimer (1980), Philip Henry Gosse: A Bibliography. Folkestone, Kent: Dawson. "Father of the Aquarium",Wertheimer, Douglas (2024), Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, Glasgow: Brethren Archivists and Historians Network, pp.194, 208-212. scientific illustrator, lecturer, entrepreneur and pioneer in the study of marine biology and ornithology. Gosse created and stocked the world's first public marine aquariumWertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, page 198. at London Zoo in 1853, and coined the term "aquarium". His 1854 work The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea was the catalyst for the aquarium craze in mid-Victorian England.Katherine C. Grier (2008) Pets in America: A History. p. 53. University of North Carolina Press Over thirty years later, Gosse co-authored a three-volume work on Rotifera (microscopic aquatic animals), considered at the time "the most complete and exhaustive history of the Rotifera in any language", with drawings of "extreme minuteness, accuracy, and beauty".Quoted in Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, p.xix
In addition, Gosse was one of the chief figures among Brethren, British evangelical Christians frequently referred to by the misnomer "Plymouth Brethren". For over half of his life, he advanced his religious outlook by lecturing, evangelising, teaching, preaching and watching for the Second Advent, as well as helping to spread the movement across the world.Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, page xvii
After his death in 1888, the popular image of Gosse was shaped by his son, Edmund W. Gosse, the poet and critic, in his 1890 Life of Philip Henry Gosse F.R.S. and most notably in his 1907 memoir, Father and Son. In the latter work, among other things, Gosse was portrayed as an overbearing father of uncompromising religious views.Virginia Woolf, "Edmund Gosse", Fortnightly 135 (1931), 767, wrote of Gosse as a fundamentalist fanatic, a father with an "almost insane religious mania" who raised his son in "narrowness" and "ugliness" in a home devoid of "culture, beauty, urganity, graciousness". Edmund Gosse mythologized the reception given to Gosse’s Omphalos (1857), an attempt to reconcile the geological ages of uniformitarian geology with the biblical account of creation. After new research, most aspects of Edmund Gosse's characterization of his father's life and career in religion and science have been challenged by Douglas Wertheimer in Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography (2024) and elsewhereDouglas Wertheimer, "A Son and His Father: Edmund Gosse's Comments and Portraits, 1875-1910" Nineteenth-Century Prose 48 (Spring/Fall 2021), 45-92 and Douglas Wertheimer, "The Truth About 1843, and Why It's Important: Gosse, Brethren, Jamaica and the Scorpion", Brethren Historical Review 18, 2022, 15-63. though the older view persists.
There are three portraits of Gosse at the National Portrait Gallery, London.
Early life Philip Henry Gosse was born in Worcester in 1810, second of four children of Thomas Gosse (1765–1844), a mezzotint engraver and itinerant painter of miniature portraits, and Hannah (née Best), a lady's maid before her marriage. He spent his childhood mostly in Poole, Dorset, where his aunt, Susan Bell, taught him to draw and introduced him to zoology. She had similarly taught her own son, Thomas Bell, who was 18 years older and later became a great friend to Gosse.
At 15, he began work as a clerk in the counting house of George Garland and Sons in Poole. In 1827 he sailed to Newfoundland to serve as a clerk in the Carbonear premises of Slade, Elson and Co. There, he became a dedicated, self-taught student of Newfoundland entomology, "the first person systematically to investigate and to record the entomology" of the island. While living in Carbonear, he wrote and illustrated an "exquisite" volume, never published, the "Entomologia Terrae Novae". In 1832, Gosse experienced a religious conversion and, as he described it, "solemnly, deliberately and uprightly, took God for my God".Quoted in
In 1835, he left Newfoundland for Compton, Lower Canada (now Quebec), where he farmed unsuccessfully for three years. He originally tried to establish a commune with two of his religious friends. The experience deepened his love for natural history, and locals referred to him as "that crazy Englishman who goes about picking up bugs". During that time, he became a member of the Natural History Society of Montreal and submitted specimens to its museum.
In 1838 Gosse taught for eight months for Reuben Saffold, the owner of Belvoir plantation, near Pleasant Hill, Alabama. In that period, planters often hired private tutors to teach their children. Gosse also studied the local flora and fauna and drew illustrations of insects in a notebook titled Entomologia Alabamensis that were not published until 2010.Mullen, Gary R. and Taylor D. Littleton (2010) Philip Henry Gosse: Science and Art in Letters from Alabama and Entomologia Alabamensis. Tuscaloosa, Alabama: University of Alabama Press. The cotton plantation was in the Black Belt of Alabama, and Saffold held numerous enslaved labourers. Gosse recorded his negative impressions of slavery, later published as Letters from Alabama (1859).
Young naturalist and lay preacher Returning to England in 1839, Gosse was hard pressed to make a living and subsisted on eightpence a day ("one herring eaten as slowly as possible, and a little bread"). His fortunes began to improve when John Van Voorst, the leading publisher of naturalist writing, agreed, on the recommendation of Thomas Bell, to publish his Canadian Naturalist (1840).. In his son's telling, Gosse "broke down utterly into hysterical sob upon sob, while Mr. Van Voorst, murmuring, 'My dear young man! my dear young man!' hastened out to fetch wine and minister to wants which it was beyond the power of pride to conceal any longer". Edmund Gosse, Life of Philip Henry Gosse (1890), 157. The book, set as a conversation between a father and his son (Gosse did not yet have a son), was widely praised. It is now considered to demonstrate that Gosse "had a practical grasp of the importance of conservation, far ahead of his time".
Gosse opened a "Classical and Commercial School for Young Gentlemen" while keeping detailed records of his microscopic investigations of pond life, especially cyclopidae and rotifera. He also began to preach to the Wesleyan Methodists and led a Bible class. In 1842, he became so captivated by the doctrine of the Second Coming of Christ that he severed his connection with the Methodists and joined Brethren. Though Dissenters emphasised the Second Coming and rejected liturgy and an ordained ministry although they otherwise endorsed the traditional doctrines of Christianity as represented by the creeds of the Methodist and the Anglican Church.. Gosse "denied any connection with Plymouth" and sometimes called himself simply a member of the church of Christ.
In 1843, Gosse gave up the school to write An Introduction to Zoology for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK) and to draw some of the illustrations. Writing the work inspired him to further his interest in the flora and fauna of the seashore. He showed in his book that he was a creationist, which was typical of pre-Darwinian naturalists.
In October 1844, Gosse went on his own responsibility to Jamaica, where he collected natural history specimens for sale.Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, p. 125 and fn.141. Although Gosse worked hard during his eighteen months on the island, he later called the period his "'holiday' in Jamaica". Gosse's study covered virtually all aspects of Jamaican natural history, and he left a record as "the Father of Jamaican Ornithology", the "Father of Jamaican Herpetology" and the Father of "many other aspects of Jamaican biology".Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, p. 149; Schwartz, Albert and Richard Thomas. 1975. A Check-list of West Indian Amphibians and Reptiles. Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Pittsburgh. 216 pp., Gosse lauded the work of Richard Hill, the island's first resident naturalist and ornithologist,Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, p. 142 and hired black youths as assistants, especially praising Samuel Campbell. 125, 129. Gosse's insatiable curiosity included trying to eat the birds. On one occasion, he literally ate crow and called the breast "well-based and juicy" but "dark, tough, and coarse grained". Several birds collected by Campbell and Gosse in Jamaica are in the collection of World Museum, National Museums Liverpool. For Christian companionship he enjoyed the company of a local Brethren community and their black converts, while remaining in touch with Brethren whom he had met in London.The previous universally adopted view, that Gosse was associated with Moravian Brethren in Jamaica (Edmund Gosse, Life of Philip Henry Gosse, p. 378fn.; Thwaite, p. 136, and all others), is challenged by Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, pp. 126-133.
In the years following his return to London in 1846, Gosse published three works whose achievement remains unsurpassed:Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, pp. 149-152. Birds of Jamaica (1847), Illustrations of the Birds of Jamaica (1849), and A Naturalist's Sojourn in Jamaica (1851).The title pages of Birds of Jamaica and Naturalist's Sojourn state that those works were "Assisted by Richard Hill", who was Jamaica's first resident naturalist and ornithologist: Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, pp. 142-3, xxi fn.35, 573; Frank Cundall, "Richard Hill", The Journal of Negro History, 5:1 (January 1920), 42.
Popular nature writer Back in England, Gosse wrote books on religion-related and scientific subjects, including the first of his books on Bible lands, Monuments of Ancient Egypt (1847), as well as a History of the Jews(1851), both written for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.Wertheimer, Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography, page 165. As his financial situation stabilized, Gosse courted Emily Bowes, a 41-year-old member of the Brethren, who was both a strong personality and a gifted writer of evangelical tracts. They married in November 1848,They were married by Robert Howard (brother of John Eliot Howard and son of Luke Howard) at Brook Street Chapel, Tottenham. Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (Oxford University Press, 2004), 208. and their union was an extremely happy one. As D. J. Taylor has written, "the word 'uxorious' seems to have been minted to define" Gosse.Taylor book review in The Guardian. Gosse's only son was born on 21 September 1849. Gosse noted the event in his diary with the words: "E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica"—an amusing conjunction which Edmund later described as demonstrating only the order of events: the boy had arrived first.Edmund Gosse, Father and Son (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907), 6.
Gosse wrote a succession of books and articles on natural history, some of which were (in his own words) "pot-boilers" for religious publications. (At the time, accounts of God's creation were considered appropriate Sabbath reading for children.) As L. C. Croft wrote: "Much of Gosse's success was due to the fact that he was essentially a field naturalist who was able to impart to his readers something of the thrill of studying living animals at first hand rather than the dead disjointed ones of the museum shelf. In addition to this he was a skilled scientific draughtsman who was able to illustrate his books himself".