Editing Philip Henry Gosse (section)

==Popular nature writer==
Back in England, Gosse wrote books on religion-related and scientific subjects, including the first of his books on Bible lands, ''Monuments of Ancient Egypt'' (1847), as well as a ''History of the Jews''(1851), both written for the [[Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge]].<ref>Wertheimer, ''Philip Henry Gosse: A Biography,'' page 165.</ref> As his financial situation stabilized, Gosse courted [[Emily Bowes]], a forty-one-year-old member of the Brethren, who was both a strong personality and a gifted writer of evangelical [[Tract (literature)|tracts]]. They married in November 1848,<ref>They were married by Robert Howard (brother of [[John Eliot Howard]] and son of [[Luke Howard]]) at Brook Street Chapel, [[Tottenham]]. Edmund Gosse, ''Father and Son'' (Oxford University Press, 2004), 208.</ref> and their union was an extremely happy one.  As [[D. J. Taylor (writer)|D. J. Taylor]] has written, "the word 'uxorious' seems to have been minted to define" Gosse.<ref>[http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,799588,00.html Taylor book review] in ''[[The Guardian]]''.</ref> Gosse's only son was born on 21 September 1849. Gosse noted the event in his diary with the words, "E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica"—an amusing conjunction which Edmund later described as demonstrating only the order of events: the boy had arrived first.<ref>Edmund Gosse, ''Father and Son'' (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907), 6.</ref>

Gosse wrote a succession of books and articles on natural history, some of which were (in his own words) "[[potboiler|pot-boilers]]" for religious publications. (At the time, accounts of God's creation were considered appropriate Sabbath reading for children.){{sfnp|Thwaite|2002|p=166}}  As L. C. Croft has written, 
<blockquote>"Much of Gosse's success was due to the fact that he was essentially a field naturalist who was able to impart to his readers something of the thrill of studying living animals at first hand rather than the dead disjointed ones of the museum shelf. In addition to this he was a skilled scientific draughtsman who was able to illustrate his books himself."<ref name="oxforddnb.com"/></blockquote>

Suffering from headaches, perhaps the result of overwork, Gosse, with his family, began to spend more time away from London on the [[Devon]] coast.{{sfnp|Thwaite|2002|pp=170-173}} Here along the sea shore, Gosse began serious experimentation with ways to sustain sea creatures so that they could be examined "without diving to gaze on them."  He constructed and stocked the first marine aquarium, and first public aquarium, in the world in 1853, in London.<ref>{{cite web |title=Philip Henry Gosse: the man who invented the fishtank |url=https://www.discoverwildlife.com/people/philip-henry-gosse-first-aquarium |website=Discover Wildlife |access-date=24 August 2024 }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=The Pioneering Fish House: A Look at the World's First Public Aquarium (1853) – Your Aquarium |url=https://youraquarium.co.uk/aquarium-blog/the-pioneering-fish-house-a-look-at-the-worlds-first-public-aquarium-1853 |access-date=24 August 2024 |date=20 March 2023}}</ref> Although there had been attempts to construct what had previously been called an "aquatic vivarium" (a name Gosse found "awkward and uncouth"), Gosse published ''The Aquarium'' in 1854 and set off a mid-Victorian craze for household [[aquarium]]s.<ref>{{harvp|Thwaite|2002|pages=177-187}}; www.ParlourAquariums.org.uk/</ref> The book was financially profitable for Gosse, and "the reviews were full of praise". Even in this work, Gosse used natural science to point to the necessity of salvation through the [[blood of Christ]].{{sfnp|Thwaite|2002|p=181}} In 1856 Gosse was elected a [[Fellow of the Royal Society]], which, because he had no university position or inherited wealth, gave him "a standing he otherwise lacked."{{sfnp|Thwaite|2002|p=194}}

A few months before Gosse was honoured, his wife discovered that she had breast cancer. Rather than undergo surgery (a risky procedure in 1856), the Gosses decided to submit to the [[ointments]] of an American doctor, Jesse Weldon Fell, who if not a [[charlatan]], was certainly on the fringe of contemporary medical practice. After much suffering, Emily Gosse died on 9 February 1857.<ref>{{harvp|Thwaite|2002|pages=194-203}}. She was buried at [[Abney Park Cemetery]] in [[Stoke Newington]].</ref> She entrusted her husband with their son's salvation, and perhaps her death drove Gosse into his "strange severities and eccentric prohibitions."<ref>{{harvp|Thwaite|2002|p=201}} "It was his son's misfortune to have to face this formidable opponent, burning with the trust Emily had placed in him, a shepherd with one precious lamb to keep safe from the grievous, ravening wolves, the temptations of the world." (204)</ref>