A. E. Housman: A Reassessment

✍ Scribed by Alan W. Holden, J. Roy Birch (eds.)

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan UK
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 244
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

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.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xix
A. E. Housman’s ‘Level Tones’....Pages 1-19
The Critical Reception of A Shropshire Lad....Pages 20-36
The Land of Lost Content....Pages 37-52
Tacit Pledges....Pages 53-75
‘Ashes under Uricon’: Historicizing A. E. Housman, Reifying T. H. Huxley, Embracing Lucretius....Pages 76-86
A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy....Pages 87-105
‘Flowers to Fair’: A Shropshire Lad’s Legacy of Song....Pages 106-133
Housman’s Manilius....Pages 134-153
Lewis Carroll in Shropshire....Pages 154-166
The First Edition of A Shropshire Lad in Bookshop and Auction Room....Pages 167-187
A. E. Housman’s Use of Biblical Narrative....Pages 188-209
The Spirit of Haiku and A. E. Housman....Pages 210-219
Back Matter....Pages 220-225

✦ Subjects

Science, general