Now readers can find out more about the life of this self-taught entomologist, botanist, lepidopterist, ornithologist and marine biologist thanks to a new biography, Glimpses of the Wonderful, by Ann Thwaites.
As an eager young man, Gosse (1810 - 1888) worked in Newfoundland, Jamaica, Alabama and London, before settling in Devon.
He published 40 books, perfected and popularised the aquarium - a name he himself devised - and, as a passionate Christian, was at the heart of the Victorian conflict between science and religion, both as a friend and antagonist of Charles Darwin.
Along his path from extreme poverty to the fellowship of the Royal Society, Gosse visited Tenby several times, and popularised the resort amongst amateur biologists and collectors with the publication in 1856 of his beautifully illustrated book Tenby: A Seaside Holiday.
Indeed, on the visit in 1854, which inspired the book, Gosse wrote to his naturalist friend, Rev. Charles Kingsley, saying: 'A most lovely place this is: I know not whether to admire most the inland scenery, the noble cliffs and headlands and caverns, or the profusion of marine animals which I meet with. It is by far the most prolific place for the naturalist that I have explored and I expect to get some treasures here'.
He returned to Tenby in the late summer of 1856, and, while lodging at Cambrian House in St. Julian Street, began to hold shore classes along Tenby and Saundersfoot beaches and indoor lectures in the Tenby Assembly Rooms.
Gosse never returned to Tenby following the death of his wife from cancer in 1857, and naturally, his involvement with the town marks only a brief episode in the life of the respected naturalist who, the Royal Society concluded on his death, 'had done more than anyone else to encourage the study of natural history'.
Born in London Ann Thwaite, a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, now lives in Norfolk and her Gosse biography is as meticulously researched as her equally acclaimed biographies on Emily Tennison, Edmund Gosse and A. A. Milne.
In Glimpses of the Wonderful - a title taken from one of Gosse's own books - she explores the naturalist's obsession with the wonders of both heaven and earth and recreates the successive stages of his life, including the fraught relationship with his son, Edmund, that became the subject of Edmund's memoir, Father and Son.
The impression in Edmund's work was that Gosse was a fanatical ogre, but Mrs. Thwaite attempts to put the case that Gosse junior's memorable portrait of a tyrannical father paints an inaccurate and unjust portrait of the great Victorian.
Published by Faber and Faber, Glimpses of the Wonderful: The Life of Philip Henry Gosse, was released on October 7, priced £25 (hardback).