A.E.Housman

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 Adalbert. Housman's poetry, like his life, is deceptively simple: this volume shows some of the complex currents below its surface.

ISBN 0333658035   Pages 248 ISBN13 9780333658031 (What's this?)   Weight (grammes) 479 Publisher Palgrave Macmillan   Published in Basingstoke Imprint Palgrave Macmillan   Height (mm) 224 Format Hardback   Width (mm) 142 Publication date 30 Sep 1999   Spine width (mm) 20 DEWEY 821.912   Academic level Undergraduate, Postgraduate, Professional / Scholarly, General DEWEY edition DC21

		Acknowledgements
		Notes on the Contributors
		Introduction
1		A. E. Housman's 'Level Tones' by Archie Burnett		1
2		The Critical Reception of A Shropshire Lad by Benjamin F. Fisher		20
3		The Land of Lost Content by Keith Jebb		37
4		Tacit Pledges by Geoffrey Hill		53
5		'Ashes under Uricon': Historicizing A. E. Housman, Reifying T. H. Huxley, Embracing Lucretius by Kenneth Womack		76
6		A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy by Norman Page		87
7		'Flowers to Fair': A Shropshire Lad's Legacy of Song by Trevor Hold		106
8		Housman's Manilius by G. P. Goold		134
9		Lewis Carroll in Shropshire by John Bayley		154
10		The First Edition of A Shropshire Lad in Bookshop and Auction Room by P. G. Naiditch		167
11		A. E. Housman's Use of Biblical Narrative by Carol Efrati		188
12		The Spirit of Haiku and A. E. Housman by Takeshi Obata		210
		Select Bibliography		220
		Index		223

'Should be read by anyone with the slightest interest in A.E. Houseman.' - Neil Powell, Times Literary Supplement 'These essays will interest and stimulate both general readers and scholars. Contemporary poets might be edified too.' - Simon Curtis, The Thomas Hardy Journal 'Geoffrey Hill's 'Tacit Pledges' and John Bayley's 'Lewis Carroll in Shropshire' - the most engaging as well as the most distinguished essay in the book - should be read by anyone with the slightest interst in A. E. Housman.' - Times Literary Supplement

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