Goslings

When a worldwide plague kills off most of England’s 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 daughters—who have never been permitted to learn self-reliance—to 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!

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.