A.E. Housman's poetry (especially A Shropshire Lad) remains well-known, widely read and often quoted. However, Housman did not view himself as a professional poet, always making quite clear that his 'proper job' was as a Professor of Latin. Housman's fame as a poet has often obscured the fact that he was the leading British classical scholar of his generation, and a Cambridge Professor. It has also sometimes been suggested that Housman's two areas of activity are the sign of a flawed or 'divided' personality. A.E. Housman: A Single Life argues that there is no fundamental tension between Housman the poet and Housman the scholar, and his career is presented very much as that of a working academic who also wrote poetry. The book gives a full account of what Housman described as 'the great and real troubles of my early manhood', and in particular his unrequited and life-long love for his undergraduate friend Moses Jackson. It resists the temptation to classify Housman too exclusively as a melancholic, and is sceptical about Housman's reputed rudeness and misanthropy, pointing out that, though Housman was famously aloof in manner, he was notably loyal and generous, courteous in his daily dealings and generally liked by those who knew him. He also possessed a highly developed sense of the absurd and a ready and often disconcerting wit, features which characterised not only his letters and miscellaneous writings, but also, famously, much of his scholarly work.

Purchase one of 1st World Library's Classic Books and help support our free internet library of downloadable eBooks. Visit us online at www.1stWorldLibrary.ORG - - The great farm hall was ablaze with the fire-light, and noisy with laughter and talk and many-sounding work. None could be idle but the very young and the very old: little Rol, who was hugging a puppy, and old Trella, whose palsied hand fumbled over her knitting. The early evening had closed in, and the farm-servants, come from their outdoor work, had assembled in the ample hall, which gave space for a score or more of workers. Several of the men were engaged in carving, and to these were yielded the best place and light; others made or repaired fishing-tackle and harness, and a great seine net occupied three pairs of hands. Of the women most were sorting and mixing eider feather and chopping straw to add to it. Looms were there, though not in present use, but three wheels whirred emulously, and the finest and swiftest thread of the three ran between the fingers of the house-mistress. Near her were some children, busy too, plaiting wicks for candles and lamps. Each group of workers had a lamp in its centre, and those farthest from the fire had live heat from two braziers filled with glowing wood embers, replenished now and again from the generous hearth. But the flicker of the great fire was manifest to remotest corners, and prevailed beyond the limits of the weaker lights.

The Letters of A. E. Housman is a scholarly edition of over 2200 letters. (The previous edition, edited by Henry Maas, contained just over 880.) The letters cover the whole range of Housman's daily activities, whether he writes as poet, Professor of Latin, son, brother, uncle, friend, or citizen. Thus they allow the fullest possible revelation of a man whose reserve was legendary. He emerges as a more amiable, more sociable, more generous, more painstaking, and more complexperson than has previously been realized. In most cases the source of the text is a manuscript, and this has resulted in a text that is more accurate and more complete than any previously available. Accompanying the text are notes covering persons and places, poetry, classical scholarship, publishinghistory, and literary allusion and echo.

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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.

This volume is pivotal reading for laypersons looking for an accurate understanding of the private life and public career of A.E. Housman. Furthermore, it is also essential for any reader seeking to recover a truer image of the Victorian man who, during his lifetime, issued two collections of Romantic poems, A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems. It will be of particular interest to history buffs, poets, professors and students of classical studies, and instructors in literary criticism, given that it sketches Housman’s biography and examines in detail his scholarship.

A. E. Housman, romantic poet and classical scholar, is best-known as the author of A Shropshire Lad and the meticulous editor of Manilius, the Latin poet of astronomy. In this first full biography, Richard Perceval Graves convincingly reconciles the two apparently conflicting sides of Housman's personality, and reassesses the reputation of a man who was something of a mystery even to his closest friends. 'This is bound to become the standard life.' John Carey, Sunday Times 'Dispassionate and well-researched.' Philip Larkin, Guardian

A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was a poet of enormous popularity and widespread influence: a Latin scholar of the front rank, a superb prose stylist, a notable writer of comic verse and, thanks to the enormous success of A Shropshire Lad, one of the greatest and best-known poems in the English language, he became a legend in his own lifetime. Reissued to mark the centenary of the publication of A Shropshire Lad, Norman Page's highly-acclaimed biography is regarded as the most complete account of Housman's life and career available. Drawing on a wide range of sources, including much unpublished material, Norman Page provides us with a fascinating insight into Housman the poet, the scholar and the man. `By far the best biography of Housman we have ...' - Andrew Motion, Times Literary Supplement