Today, Philip Henry Gosse is remembered, if at all, as the patriarch and tyrannical religious maniac in his son Edmund's memoir, Father and Son. This is a vivid reassessment of the life of Philip Henry Gosse, the renowned Victorian naturalist, author, illustrator and Christian fundamentalist, who as both friend and antagonist of Charles Darwin, was at the very heart of the Victorian conflict between science and religion. Thwaite shows that Gosse believed that "the gratification of scientific curiosity is worse than useless if we ignore God."--Publisher.

Philip Henry Gosse (1810-88), a fundamentalist Christian who struggled with many aspects of contemporary science, was famous as a natural historian, his books prompting Victorian crazes for collecting ferns and seashore life. This 1865 work offers essays on aspects of the geography and natural history of the West Country.