This is a new study and interpretation of the much loved poet, A. E. Housman, best known for his poem A Shropshire Lad. But there was so much more to this enigmatic person, our greatest classicist who penned some of the loveliest poetry ever written. In this book, Waine investigates Housman's enigmatic and brilliant mind, and shows, with empathy and wit, how he located a complicated path on which to walk and flourish, despite the many brambles that lay on all sides of his lonely journey. W.H. Auden famously described A.E. Housman as keeping 'tears like dirty postcards in a drawer'. An element of mystery has always surrounded the life of this intensely private man. In his quirky but compelling account of Housman's development into both a renowned classical scholar (even after failing his undergraduate degree in Classics!) and the best selling author of A Shropshire Lad, Peter Waine casts fresh light on the oddities and obsessions that resulted in the rebarbative Housman 'persona', as well as in some of the most beautiful and moving lyrics in the English language. Richly detailed and elegantly written, this is a fascinating guide to the work of a poet whose admirers ranged from Oscar Wilde to Randall Jarrell. Book jacket.

A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and Nominated for the 2017 PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography A captivating exploration of A. E. Housman and the influence of his particular brand of Englishness A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad made little impression when it was first published in 1896 but has since become one of the best-loved volumes of poetry in the English language. Its evocation of the English coun - tryside, thwarted love, and a yearning for things lost is as potent today as it was more than a century ago, and the book has never been out of print. In Housman Country, Peter Parker explores the lives of A. E. Housman and his most famous book, and in doing so shows how A Shropshire Lad has permeated English life and culture since its publication. The poems were taken to war by soldiers who wanted to carry England in their pockets, were adapted by composers trying to create a new kind of English music, and have influ - enced poetry, fiction, music, and drama right up to the present day. Everyone has a personal “land of lost content” with “blue remembered hills,” and Housman has been a tangible and far-reaching presence in a startling range of work, from the war poets and Ralph Vaughan Williams to Inspector Morse and Morrissey. Housman Country is a vivid exploration of England and Englishness, in which Parker maps out terrain that is as historical and emotional as it is topographical.

In this series a contemporary poet selects and introduces another poet of a different generation whom they have particularly admired. This selection of A.E. Housman poems are selected by Alan Hollinghurst.

This collection of essays was conceived as part of the centenary celebrations of the first publication in 1896 of one of the most popular collections of poetry ever written - A Shropshire Lad - a collection never out of print in a hundred years. Yet Housman was a recluse, an austere classicist of great renown who devoted his academic life to the correction of ancient texts. He filled his poems with the lives, loves, and deaths of simple country people whose emotions are intense and often violent, but lived his own life in stoic acceptance of his loveless, arid existence. Why his life should have been so intentionally empty of emotion raises questions about Housman's own sexuality and the relationship he had with his friend Moses Jackson and Jackson's brother Afalbert. Housman's poetry, like his life, is deceptively simple: this volume shows some of the complex currents below the surface.

“Last Poems” is a 1936 collection of poetry by A. E. Housman. The poems include: “The West”, “Llic Jacet”, “Grenadier”, “Lancer”, “The Deserter”, “The Culprit”, “Eight O'Clock”, “Spring Morning”, “Astronomy”, “Epithalamium”, “The Oracles”, “Sinner's Rue”, “Hell's Gate”, “Revolution”, “Epitaph On An Army Of Mercenaries”, and “Fancy's Knell”. Alfred Edward Housman (1859–1936), also known as A. E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar considered to be one of the greatest scholars who ever lived. A fantastic collection of classic poetry by a master of the form. This classic work is being republished now in a new edition complete with a chapter from “Twenty-Four Portraits” by William Rothenstein.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was a man of many apparent contradictions, most of which remain unresolved 150 years after his birth. At once a deeply emotive lyric poet and a precise and dedicated classical scholar, he achieved fame in both of these diverse disciplines. Although his poetic legacy has received much scholarly analysis, and yet more attention has been devoted to reconstructing his private life, no previous work has focused on Housman the classical scholar; yet it is upon scholarship that Housman most wished to leave his mark. This timely collection of papers by leading scholars reassesses the breadth and significance of Housman's contribution to classical scholarship in both his published and unpublished writings, and discusses how his mantle has been passed on to later generations of classicists.