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AN AFTERWORD BY SARAH PERRY

Subtitled "a study of two temperaments" Edmund Gosse's childhood memoir tells the often fractious, often comic story of his relationship with his authoritarian father. A pioneering naturalist and marine biologist, Philip Henry Gosse's strictly religious world view is brought into crisis with the discoveries of Charles Darwin, and as the younger Edmund struggles to break away from his father's influence, he begins to discover himself.