Philip Henry Gosse

Philip Henry Gosse (6 April 1810 – 23 August 1888), called Henry by those who knew him, was an English naturalist who did a bit of everything: he popularised science, wrote books by the dozen, illustrated them himself, gave lectures, dabbled in business, and helped pioneer marine biology and ornithology. He is best remembered as the "Father of the Aquarium". In 1853 he built and filled the world's first public marine aquarium at London Zoo, and he also invented the word "aquarium". His book *The Aquarium: An Unveiling of the Wonders of the Deep Sea*, published the following year, sparked a full-blown aquarium craze across mid-Victorian England. Decades later, he co-wrote a three-volume study of rotifers—tiny aquatic animals—that was hailed as the most complete and exhaustive history of the group ever written in any language, with illustrations praised for their "extreme minuteness, accuracy, and beauty". Gosse was also a leading figure among the Brethren, the British evangelical Christians often wrongly called the "Plymouth Brethren". For more than half his life he lectured, evangelised, taught, preached, and kept watch for the Second Coming, helping to spread the movement worldwide.

After Gosse died in 1888, his public image was largely shaped by his son, the poet and critic Edmund W. Gosse. In a 1890 biography and, even more so, in the 1907 memoir *Father and Son*, Edmund portrayed his father as an overbearing man with rigid religious views. He also dramatised the reception of Gosse’s 1857 book *Omphalos*, which tried to square the geological ages of uniformitarian science with the biblical creation story. More recent research, particularly Douglas Wertheimer’s 2024 biography, has challenged most of Edmund’s characterisation of his father’s life and work, though the older, harsher image lingers. Three portraits of Gosse hang in the National Portrait Gallery in London.

Gosse was born in Worcester in 1810, the second of four children. His father, Thomas Gosse, was a mezzotint engraver and itinerant miniature portrait painter; his mother, Hannah Best, had been a lady’s maid before marriage. He spent most of his childhood in Poole, Dorset, where his aunt Susan Bell taught him to draw and introduced him to zoology. She had done the same for her own son, Thomas Bell, who was eighteen years older and later became a close friend to Gosse.

At fifteen, Gosse started work as a clerk in the counting house of George Garland and Sons in Poole. In 1827 he sailed to Newfoundland to clerk for Slade, Elson and Co. in Carbonear. There he became a dedicated, self-taught student of the island’s insects—the first person to systematically investigate and record Newfoundland’s entomology. He wrote and illustrated an unpublished volume called *Entomologia Terrae Novae*, described as "exquisite". In 1832 he underwent a religious conversion, "solemnly, deliberately and uprightly" taking God as his own.

In 1835 he left Newfoundland for Compton, Lower Canada (now Quebec), where he tried farming for three years. He had originally hoped to start a commune with two religious friends. The experience deepened his love of natural history, and locals called him "that crazy Englishman who goes about picking up bugs". He joined the Natural History Society of Montreal and sent specimens to its museum. In 1838 he spent eight months teaching for Reuben Saffold, owner of the Belvoir plantation near Pleasant Hill, Alabama. Planters often hired private tutors for their children. Gosse studied local plants and animals, filling a notebook called *Entomologia Alabamensis* with insect illustrations that were not published until 2010. The cotton plantation sat in Alabama’s Black Belt, and Saffold held many enslaved workers. Gosse recorded his negative impressions of slavery, later publishing them as *Letters from Alabama* (1859).

Back in England in 1839, Gosse struggled to make a living, subsisting on eightpence a day—"one herring eaten as slowly as possible, and a little bread". His luck turned when John Van Voorst, the leading publisher of natural history, agreed on Thomas Bell’s recommendation to publish *Canadian Naturalist* (1840). Written as a conversation between a father and son (Gosse did not yet have a son), the book was widely praised and is now seen as showing that Gosse "had a practical grasp of the importance of conservation, far ahead of his time". He opened a "Classical and Commercial School for Young Gentlemen" while keeping detailed records of his microscopic studies of pond life, especially cyclopidae and rotifers. He also began preaching to Wesleyan Methodists and leading a Bible class. In 1842 he became so captivated by the doctrine of Christ’s Second Coming that he left the Methodists and joined the Brethren. Like other Dissenters, they emphasised the Second Coming and rejected liturgy and an ordained ministry, though they otherwise held to traditional Christian creeds.

In 1843 Gosse gave up the school to write *An Introduction to Zoology* for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, drawing some of the illustrations himself. The work spurred his interest in seashore life. The book showed he was a creationist, which was typical for pre-Darwinian naturalists. In October 1844 he went to Jamaica on his own account, collecting natural history specimens to sell. He worked hard during his eighteen months on the island, though he later called the...