Goslings

(Paperback, Anniversary Edition)

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Description

When a worldwide plague kills off most of Englands male population, the highly conventional Mr. Gosling and his daughters begin to fulfill long-thwarted tendencies and desires. Gosling abandons his family for a life of lechery, leaving his daughterswho have never been permitted to learn self-relianceto loot abandoned shops. Eventually, the Gosling girls find a place in a female-dominated agricultural commune but their new life is threatened by their elders prejudices about free love!

Reviews

"At once a postapocalyptic adventure, a comedy of manners, and a tract on sexual and social equality,Goslings is by turns funny, horrifying, and politically stirring. Most remarkable of all may be that it has not yet been recognized as a classic." -- Benjamin Kunkel "Edwardian catastrophe novel in the mode of H.G. Wells, with ironic description of a devastated world through a lower middle class London family. Good realistic detail."-- E.F. Bleiler, Science Fiction, the Early Years "A fantastic commentary upon life." -- W.L. George, The Bookman (1914) "Mr. Beresford possesses the rare gift of divination... The picture of that bevy of English Bacchantes -- graceless civilized savages -- dragging along a butcher in a triumphal car, cannot be forgotten -- it is a piece of the most vivid imaginative realism, as well as a challenge to our vaunted civilization." -- The Living Age (1916)

Author Bio

J.D. Beresford (1873-1947) was an English dramatist, journalist, and author. Besides Goslings (1913), his science fiction novels include The Hampdenshire Wonder (1911), about a super-genius child, Revolution (1921), What Dreams May Come... (1941), A Common Enemy (1942), and The Riddle of the Tower (1944, with Esme Wynne-Tyson), about a dystopian, hive-like society. Beresford was persecuted for his pacifism during WWI. His daughter Elisabeth was author of a series of children's books about The Wombles. Astra Taylor is a Canadian-American documentary filmmaker and writer, best known for her 2005 film, Zizek!, about the Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek, and for her 2008 film, Examined Life. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.