Reading Gosse's reading : a study of allusion in the work of Edmund Gosse
Journal: Anglia Ruskin Research Online (Anglia Ruskin University)
Year: 2014

Gosse’s reputation, both during his lifetime and thereafter, was compromised by his propensity for error, a trait that Henry James famously described as ‘a genius for inaccuracy’. Though much of his biographical and critical writing justifies this criticism, my study of Gosse’s use of the device of allusion, mainly in his fictional writing, reveals a strategy of misprision that is creative and innovative. Since the concepts of Modernism and Postmodernism have changed the way in which texts are r