author
Philip Gosse
1879–1959
A doctor by profession and a writer by passion, he turned a deep interest in history and natural history into lively, wide-ranging books. He is especially remembered for popular works on pirates that helped bring the subject to a broad readership.
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About the author
Philip Gosse (1879–1959), more fully Philip Henry George Gosse, was an English general practitioner who also wrote on natural history and history. Archival records at Cambridge describe him as a general practitioner and writer on natural history, while other archival material shows that he later became closely associated with research and writing on piracy.
He was the son of Sir Edmund Gosse, the writer and critic, and Ellen Epps Gosse, an artist. Records linked to his life and work note that he ended his career as Superintendent of the Radium Institute in London in 1930, after which he devoted serious attention to collecting documents and books about piracy and publishing works on the subject.
Among his best-known books are The Pirates' Who's Who and The History of Piracy, which helped shape popular interest in pirate lore in the early 20th century. Taken together, the surviving catalog and archive records suggest a writer whose curiosity ranged from science to seafaring history, and whose books were meant for general readers as much as specialists.