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 worldview is brought into crisis by the discoveries of Charles Darwin, and the death of his wife—and Edmund’s mother—Emily. As Edmund breaks away from his father's influence, the evolution from one epoch to the next is described in all of its struggle, humor and glory.