Tan cloth binding with gilt title on the front board and repaired spine.

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I got this mainly because I am a booknerd and the title intrigued me. Well, the title is misleading. This is basically just a collection of essays discussing the merits, disappointments, and histories behind rare titles in Gosse’s personal library. He mentions a few authors I recognize, but the works themselves sounded like pretty dry reading. There were a few historical blurbs that caught my interest, such as the story of poet Anne Finch, Countess of Winchilsea, but otherwise I ended up doing a lot of skimming.

Sir Edmund William Gosse (21 September 1849 – 16 May 1928) was an English poet, author and critic. He was strictly brought up in a small Protestant sect, the Plymouth Brethren, but broke away sharply from that faith. His account of his childhood in the book Father and Son has been described as the first psychological biography. His friendship with the sculptor Hamo Thornycroft inspired a successful career as a historian of late-Victorian sculpture. His translations of Henrik Ibsen helped to promote that playwright in England, and he encouraged the careers of Sarojini Naidu, Toru Dutt, W. B. Yeats and James Joyce. He also lectured in English literature at Cambridge University.