Portraits from life - Ann Thwaite

This book contains edited versions and extracts from Gosse's essays on his friends, many of them the leading writers of his period, such as Tennyson, Rosetti, Robert Louis Stevenson, Henry James, in whom many general readers and scholars are interested today. The book is interesting not only because of Gosse's personal reminiscences about these respected and popular literary figures, but it also makes Gosse's vast output available for the first time to today's reader. Until now, only Gosse's classic Father and Son has been available with the essays included in this volume previously out of print, many for over for fifty years and scattered in nine collections of Gosse's essays. - - R.L. Stevenson once said to Gosse ?See as many people as you can and make a book of them before you die. That will be a living book upon my word.? Gosse never made that book, but sixty years after his death, this edited collection breathes life back into Gosse's essays and gives easy access to a first-hand account of the literary circles in which he moved.