Alfred Edward Housman. Biography

Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems wistfully evoke the dooms and disappointments of youth in the English countryside. Their beauty, simplicity and distinctive imagery appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian taste, and to many early 20th-century English composers both before and after the First World War. Through their song-settings, the poems became closely associated with that era, and with Shropshire itself.

Housman was one of the foremost classicists of his age and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars who ever lived. He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar and, on the strength and quality of his work, was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and then at the University of Cambridge. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

Alfred Edward Housman's Poems:

1. A Shropshire Lad. 13. When I Was One-and-Twenty
2. A Shropshire Lad. 40. Into My Heart an Air that Kills
3. Last Poems. 9. The Chestnut Casts His Flambeaux
4. More Poems. 23. Crossing Alone the Nighted Ferry
5. A Shropshire Lad. 58. When I Came Last to Ludlow
6. A Shropshire Lad. 2. Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now
7. A Shropshire Lad. 18. Oh, When I Was in Love with You
8. Infant Innocence
9. A Shropshire Lad. 36. White in the Moon the Long Road Lies
10. A Shropshire Lad. 10. March