Gosse, Sir Edmund

Gosse, Sir Edmund

(born Sept. 21, 1849, London, Eng.—died May 16, 1928, London) British literary historian and critic. He worked principally as a librarian and translator (of Henrik Ibsen's plays, among many other works). He wrote the literary histories 18th Century Literature (1889) and Modern English Literature (1897), as well as biographies of Thomas Gray, John Donne, Ibsen, and others, and introduced many works by continental European writers to English readers. Many of his critical essays were collected in French Profiles (1905), and his autobiography, Father and Son (1907), has been much admired.