Product Description
A wonderful collection from one of England's best-loved poets

One of the most admired poets of his day, A. E. Housman wrote poems that conjure a potent and idyllic rural world imbued with a poignant sense of loss. Expressed in simple rhythms, they show a fine ear for the subtleties of meter and alliteration and touch on subjects ranging from religious doubt to intense nostalgia. This volume brings together A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems, along with many posthumous selections and three translations of extracts from Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides that display Housman's mastery of classical literature. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Well-formatted for Kindle 3
There IS a clickable table of contents; however, it's disabled in Menu - Go To... The Table of Contents lists the introduction, books (A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, More Poems, Additional Poems, Translations), Appendix, Notes, Index of First Lines, and Index of Titled Poems, not the individual poems. The indices are hyperlinked, so they can take you to the poem by title or first line. In some places phrases are hyperlinked in poems. Clicking the hyperlink takes you to the Notes section for alternate phrases that were used for some version of the poem. So far, my experience with Penguin Books is that they are very well formatted for Kindle 3. If you like Housman, and if you have a Kindle 3, I think you will be very well satisfied with this. And, to top it off, the Kindle version is available before the print version! ... Read more

Product Description
This is the first complete edition of A.E. Housman's poetry, unprecedented in the context to which it reveals the shaping processes of his poetic thought. To the poetry of The Collective Poems (1939) it adds a substantial body of light verses the juvenilia, some of it printed or collected for the first time. It also revises the texts--particularly the posthumously published poems and notebook fragments--in light of a comprehensive survey of manuscript and printed sources, recording all textual variants. As well as charting his compositional practices, the editor illuminates the many sources, from Biblical and Classical to contemporary, which influenced Housman--consciously or unconsciously--in his choice of ideas, images, and phraseology. Drawing on the poet's two commonplace books, works he is known to have read, and volumes from his library, the editor's commentary traces the remarkable range of his echoes and allusions, which have never before been explored in such detail. The introduction and commentary also cover dating and other textual matters, information on persons, places, and historical context, and Housman's linguistic usage. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Wonderful but Overpriced
This is a marvelous book. It has all the poems plus some new ones (new to me, and I thought I knew the work); the clear textual apparatus would have pleased the great textual scholar-poet himself. Moreover, the notes are truly helpful, adding information about botany, the classics, astrology, and other references that give the poetry additional depth and make these seemingly simple verses richer.

...Housman, Graves's biography tells us, wanted his books inexpensive so as to be widely available. Surely plasticated paper over boards in a perfect binding, no matter what the costs of storage and overhead may be, can't justify this steep a sum. ... Read more

Product Description
Housman's melodic and memorable poems have been popular for over a century. He writes typically of lost love, of the brevity of happiness, of young soldiers doomed to die. Admirers have found his work elegant and resonant; detractors have thought much of it mannered and glib. But Housman speaks with two voices: the smooth texts conceal a dark sub-text. This tormented and secretive man wrote poems alive with indirect self-disclosure. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Well received
Received in excellent condition. Could not track the product, so spent some time waiting and uncertain of when it would arrive.

An Excellent Collection
Five stars for the edition; four or perhaps four+ for Houseman's poetry.This is an excellent collection and good value for dollar.It includes the major pieces in a readable, well-bound, inexpensive format.Houseman's output is such that it can be read and enjoyed in a brief period of time, so pour a drink, find the comfy chair and enjoy.Crime writers take note: Houseman's verse may not be uniformly superb, but it contains a number of brilliant passages which have served very nicely as epigraphs for crime novels. ... Read more

Product Description
This volume constitutes the authorized canon of A.E. Housman’s verse as it was established in 1939, three years after his death.In contains A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, More Poems, the Additional Poems, and the three translations from A.W. Pollard’s anthology, Odes from the Greek Dramatists.
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Customer Reviews (7)

excellence in writing
Housman's poetry is very gloomy; considering that all the pictures I saw of him in my high school English IV class looked as if he has a stick shoved up his __.I recommend "To an Athlete Dying Young" number 19 in his collection called A Shropshire Lad.Still strangely relevant since it's first writing way back in 1896, it's just a really good example of really vivid poetry done by a master.

Necessary Addition to Any Poet Lover's Collection
Absolutely necessary reading for any poetry lover. If by some terrible mistake you have so far missed Housman, you should make up for it immediately. Don't waste your time reading reviews, just get the book asap!

So set, before its echoes fade...
A.E., Housman's superb poem, "To an Athlete Dying Young", cannot help but bring to mind all the young men who perished in aerial combat. You knew some. I knew some. We are now moving off stage and we cannot help but hope and pray that others will carry on the task of remembrance. I drive by Putterham Circle in South Brookline, Massachusetts, frequently and I note that the wooden sign dedicating the traffic circle to my old friend Staff Sgt. Frank Ryan is in need of replacement.

What brings this to mind is a letter from a Fred Farnsworth (email address: FredieF@aol.com) of Los Alamos, New Mexico. He is interested in the life of his late cousin, Lt. Everett Farnsworth, of Stillwater, Oklahoma. His cousin and Jimmy Stewart were close pals and used to double date the English girls who lived near the air field. I should note here that I have yet to hear one note of criticism of Jimmy either as an Airplane Commander, actor or as a human being.

Our correspondent says Jimmy told his cousin that he would honor him in a movie Stewart would make when he got back to the States. He gave Everett the name George Bailey in the movie we all have seen probably more than once. Its title was "It's a Wonderful Life".

Everett did not live to see the movie in which Stewart kept his promise. He was killed on a bombing mission when his badly shot- up Fortress went down in a Swiss lake. The name of the lake was Greifensee. Everett and one other were killed in the crash. Four other crewmen who had been ordered to bail out did so and survived. The plane was a B17G -serial no. 384BG/5545BS and it went down April 4, 1944. Anyone with information concerning the plane and its crew can forward it to "Vapor Trails".

As long as I am still here to tell the tale let me home you in a bit on my pal Frank Ryan. He was a rich kid from a very patriotic family. He had a U.S. Marine brother who fought on Tarawa if my memory serves. Frankie went to "Cranwell", a lahdeedah Jesuit boarding school in the Berkshires. I went to Boston College High, at that time a Dickensian Jebbie prep school in Boston's tough South End. It is still close to my heart after all these years. We both wound up among the very few Radio Operator Gunners who could read Latin. (I can say this without fear of correction because all my Latin teachers are dead.)

We both joined the Army Air Corp in Brookline but didn't see each other again until a couple of years later when we luckily met on a train back to Brookline. We were beginning the furloughs you get just before going overseas and presumably into combat. Frankie went to the Eighth Air Force whereas I wound up in the Tenth. I sent him a V-Mail from the 7th Bomb Groups airbase at Pandeveswar, Bengal soon after I got there. By this time the European air war was winding down. I wrote Frankie that he was one lucky guy because his war was just about finished whereas fliers in the CBI had a long way to go.

I sent the same note to Nate Douglas of Georgia whom I had met my first day of Basic Training and had been to CTD, Sioux Falls Radio School, and Gunnery School at Yuma. We said goodbye in Savannah where he was assigned to train on B17s and I was across town at Chatham Field training on Liberators.

A few weeks later I was sitting in front of a sweltering straw-roofed basha in Bengal, India, when a mail orderly came by and handed me the self-same V-Mails I had sent Ryan and Douglas. The orderly muttered "Sorry". Both V-Mails were stamp "Killed in Action."

Smart lad(s) to slip betimes away from fields where glory does not fade...
John Brennan, editor

nastalgic lyrics and ballads
I remember first discovering A. E. Housman in school when I read "A Shropshire Lad" and was rather impressed.

My favorite of his poems is "To An Athlete Dying Young". It moved me because it has a special connection with me, since now that my athletic days are over and I'm no longer a part of any team, I understand and can identify with the athlete who is once so glorious and yet his glory can be so short-lived.

David Rehak
author of "Poems From My Bleeding Heart"

Lyrical Companion
I don't know what I'd do without this book. I stumbled on Housman more or less by accident in an anthology and just fell in love -- so much emotion so perfectly crystallized in such lovely little lyrics, beautiful regardless of what connection you make to it. I can't recommend this highly enough; somehow, despite the melancholy, Housman's verse retains a power to comfort and assure in even the most dire of situations. That, I suppose, is why it was written years ago "for those unhappy fellows, unborn and unbegot, for them to read when they're in trouble and I am not." ... Read more

Product Description
A complete collection, in three volumes, of the classical articles and reviews of A. E. Housman. These papers were originally published between 1882 and 1936 in a variety of academic journals, many of which are now difficult to obtain. The editors have checked and, where necessary, supplemented and updated all the references and corrected errors in them, but have otherwise presented each paper, in full, with the minimum of editorial comment. At the end of Volume III there are very elaborate and comprehensive indexes of passages, words and topics discussed by Houston. The Kleine Schriften of great scholars are among the most important and useful tools of the classicist's trade. This edition will be of the first importance among such collections and will provide an essential work of reference. Housman's known virtues as a textual critic are decisively confirmed and emphasized now that his papers can be seen in one complete and connected sequence. ... Read more

Product Description
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 extent of Housman's contribution to classical scholarship (in both his published and unpublished writings) and shows how his mantle has been passed on to later generations of classicists. ... Read more

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The poetry of A.E. Housman is being redisovered. His volume A Shropshire Lad led him to be considered the finest poet in England. Housman's work, popular, accessible, pessimistic, fell from favour in the post-war period but as his times are reassessed there is a growing interest in his authentic voice. In this new critical biography, Keith Jebb sets aside the conflicting biographical sketches of Housman and the assumptions of past critics to place his subject in English social history and his work in literary history. New attitudes to Housman's personality while offering a new guide to the writing, including the neglected 'nonsense poems.' ... Read more

Product Description
This volume contains all of Housman's poetry (including his nonsense verse) It also includes a selection of Housman's critical prose, notably his lecture "On the Name and Nature of Poetry", as well as a selection from his letters. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Excellent, Complete Edition
This is a first rate edition of Housman's poetry and considerably more, including some of his prose and letters.The latter will largely be of interest to scholars and most will read this book for the poetry.As a poet, Housman's reputation rests on his 2 slender collections, A Shropshire Lad, and Last Poems.Some additional poems, including deft parodies, were published posthumously, but the real meat is in Shropshire and Last.

Preoccupation with death, the transience of life and youth, and frustrated love are the themes of this poetry.Housman's relatively short, powerful lyrics, direct style, and remarkably evocative phrases (has anyone ever described a youthful relaxed summer better than "the idle hill of summer") make many of these poems among the most anthologized in the English language.

OUT, OUTRAGEOUS, OUTSTANDING
I have never known how Housman got away with it, living at the time he did. He failed to obtain honours in his final Schools at Oxford but finished his life as Professor of Latin at Cambridge. He treated his fellow scholars with scarifying contempt in print. His poetry makes it clear without quite flaunting it that he was homoerotic (he would have hated 'homosexual'as being half-Greek half-Latin), and he was not only an atheist but downright blasphemous.

Obviously he is best known for his poetry. He was, or affected to be, surprised by the popular success of A Shropshire Lad with its pervasive fixation with death, but the reason is easy to see -- Housman's poetry is catchy. It has 'tingle-factor' in a big way, and the deadly simplicity haunts the memory

'So here I'll watch the night and wait
To see the morning shine
When he will hear the stroke of eight
And not the stroke of nine'
(of a man due to be hanged the next morning). In The Name and Nature of Poetry he makes a very entertaining attempt, largely at the expense of the eighteenth century style, to explain what poetry meant to him, but he gets the point across far better and more briefly in an address on Swinburne when he says 'poetry is a tone of voice, a way of saying things'. That illuminates the matter far better for me than any amount of pretentious lit crit.

The finest and most characteristic of all his poems is in Latin, the dedication of his great edition of Manilius to Moses Jackson. Those who have been privileged to study Greek and Latin while they were still mainstream subjects are not likely to forget its last four lines, among the most awesome in any language I can read, but in general I go along with the assessment of him as 'an absolutely marvellous minor poet'. As a scholar he was among the greatest, and he enlivened the dusty pages of classical scholarship with some of the most entertaining prose I have ever read. His address to the Classical Association is entitled uncompromisingly The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism, and his final words to his 'peers' -- 'one thing above all others is necessary, and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders, and brains, not pudding, in your head' is only one specimen I can never forget. 'The habit of treading in ruts and trooping in companies that men share with sheep' or 'Stoeber's reprint of Bentley's text, with a commentary intended to refute it, saw the light in 1767 in Strasbourg, a city still famous for its geese' are others.

I neither know nor care what his relationship with Jackson amounted to in practice other than that Jackson was the love of his life. He did not hesitate to to publish in the press his brilliant satirical poem on the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde, and I gather there was a tacit understanding among the dons of Trinity never to refer to his poetry. That poem ends with another of his great fixations
'He can curse the God that made him for the colour of his hair.' Like other notable atheists, e.g. Johannes Brahms, Housman knew the scriptures inside-out and he made witty use of them -- I treasure in particular the scholar who 'has rendered Greek nonsense into English nonsense and gone on his way rejoicing'.

The photograph of him on the cover of this book is more favourable than many others which make him look as if he was descended from a long line of maiden aunts, as someone once said. Be that as it may, I recommend this book to anyone not yet familiar with a great mind and a brilliant and fascinating writer. ... Read more

Product Description
Authoritative edition of one of the enduring classics of English poetry—63 poems on the nature of friendship, the passing of youth, the vanity of dreams, other human concerns. Long prized by literary scholars for their perfection of form and feeling, and loved by generations of readers for simplicity, sensitivity, direct emotional appeal.
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Customer Reviews (8)

Inexpensive Way to Try Houseman
I adore this book of poems, and one of my most prized possessions is a very old, leather bound edition that I found in an antique store. That one is safely tucked away to prevent further deterioration, so a nice Dover Thrift version to carry around with me was just what the doctor ordered. If you're not a big poetry fan, this may be the right "starter" for you. Houseman's poems are simple yet thought-provoking, and they all strike me as hauntingly beautiful. This is my favorite book of poetry to just read straight through. Sometimes I read it all the way through at a sitting and other times I'll just read one or two and ponder a while. Houseman's themes of the transience of youth and the inevitability of death are easily relatable to all human beings, and his diction is so simple and direct that his meaning is usually clear. I recently ordered several of these to give out to my students (I teach high school) because the price is so unbelievably cheap. Briliant, beautiful poetry for $2! Need I say more?

Sometimes it's best not to revisit old haunts
I think that Housman's "When I was one and twenty" was probably one of the first poems I ever memorized.I don't know where I ran across it--probably in a middle school English class--but I immediately fell in love with it.I do know that his Shropshire Lad was the first poetry book I ever bought, and I read and reread it until the covers almost fell off.

What I think I loved in Shropshire Lad was its bittersweet, nostalgic tone (it's curious that adolescents, who have so few memories themselves and even fewer tragic ones, are generally so attracted to melancholy poetry).Young men who die in their prime and who now dwell "in the nation that is not" (XII), Housman's continuous refrain that "the sun moves always west" (VII), make the entire volume a calm momento mori.Mortality is made almost attractive--or at least, in a very British sort of way, respectable.

Alas.Returning to Shropshire many, many years after I first encountered it, I fear that I find Housman rather more mawkish than memorable.His poetry is frequently clumsy, with awkward lines crammed or stretched for the sake of meter, and his sentiments--well, sentimental.I still think there is some very good verse in the book:"When I was one and twenty" has stood the test of time, and the untitled poem XXXII is magnificent:"The stuff of life to knit me/Blew hither:here am I."But for the most part, A Shropshire Lad is one of those places I enjoyed in my youth.I have fond, tender memories of visiting it all those years ago, and I've taken away a couple of especially fine poems.But it's a place to not be revisited, at least by me.

My favorite book of poetry
I bought this book of poetry because of a recommendation from a close author friend of mine. Since I bought "A shropshire lad," I have read it three times, highlighted my favorites and enjoyed every verse.

The great thing about Housman is that his rhyme scheme seems effortless. Whereas other poets seem to struggle and adjust a story to fit the rhyme, Housman's poems flow naturally and are lyrical. The subjects of his poems are very royal and I enjoy them a great deal.

If you are looking to enjoy some poetry that isn't hard to understand and is among the best ever written, I hihgly recommend "A Shropshire Lad."

Simple, yet mature poetry
As with most high school students, I was required to read and analyze "To An Athlete Dying Young." Its simple structure, elementary language and subject matter to which I could relate all made it one of my favorite poems at the time. Now, years later, it remains very interesting and drew me into A Shropshire Lad. I was curious to see the other material Housman published and was thrilled to find that all of his work shared similar attractive qualities. His poetry is accessible to even the most novice poetry readers (like myself) and clearly expresses complicated thoughts with beatiful language. Housman's empasis on the brevity of life, death and war are not happy topics, but they are realistic and it is valuable to consider his concise thoughts. I think this book, which essentially follows the life cycle, is full of fascinating poetry that anyone will enjoy, no matter what level you wish to analyze the material. It is a terrific collection.

A Clock Ticks Like Thunder
...in A. E. Housman's "A Shropshire Lad."He is obsessed with death and the brevity of time.He is determined to wring meaning out of a teen soldier's blood-soaked shirt, to bring beauty out of tragedy.

Poets' critical reputations move up and down like a sine curve.Given the increasingly unread status of poetry, however, one would think that Housman's rep would be on the upswing, since he presents his ideas with clear language, pleasant rhyme, simple trochaic or iambic meter, archetypal imagery, and intense emotion; his is among the most plain and accessible poetry a major author has ever crafted, a boon to the genre at a time it's largely being ignored.

Still, people tend to read Housman wrong.They claim he's either promoting or deriding war.In fact, he's doing neither; war is simply an unfortunate fact of life for Housman.People must confuse him for Wilfred Owen, who actually does fulminate against war or Rudyard Kipling, who actually does promote it.

...Even the lovely rural setting of the poems, which in another book he refers to as "the land of lost content," suggests the rapture and freedom of boyhood is being mourned as it passes.Battle death is often a stand-in here for the death of innocence.War is only slightly more awful toward the body than time itself.War is only Housman's metaphor; love is his objective. ... Read more

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Though Housman has received little critical acclaim, he is seen by some as an undervalued ironist. Examine his work through some of his most renowned critics. His work is examined from various angles, including Housman's divided persona, figurations of time, the poetic tradition, and more.

This series is edited by Harold Bloom, Sterling Professor of the Humanities, Yale University; Henry W. and Albert A. Berg Professor of English, New York University Graduate School. History’s greatest poets are covered in one series with expert analysis by Harold Bloom and other critics. These texts offer a wealth of information on the poets and their works that are most commonly read in high schools, colleges, and universities. ... Read more

Product Description
A Shropshire Lad (1896) is a cycle of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman. A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at Housman's own expense after several publishers had turned it down, much to the surprise of his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but during the Second Boer War, Housman's nostalgic depiction of rural life and young men's early deaths struck a chord with English readers and the book became a bestseller. Later, World War I further increased its popularity.

Alfred Edward Housman (26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900. Their wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, in spare language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian, Edwardian and Georgian taste, and to many early twentieth century English composers (beginning with Arthur Somervell) both before and after the First World War. Through its song-setting the poetry became closely associated with that era, and with Shropshire itself. Housman was counted one of the foremost classicists of his age, and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars of all time. He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar and, on the strength and quality of his work, was appointed Professor of Latin at UCL and later, at Cambridge. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are still considered authoritative.- Wikipedia ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Large format, excellent photographs
Bought this book as a gift for two of my granddaughters.They haven't commented on it as yet ... Read more

Product Description
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". ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Superb Biography
A spuperb bio of the scholar poet. The structure is interesting. First, the author presents a chronological look at Housman's life with some salient facts, emphasizing the most important influences in his life. Thelatter part of the book is devoted to closer scrutiny of the differentaspects of his work and personal affairs taken separately: classicalstudies, family relationships, friendships, etc.

I read this inpreparation for seeing the new Tom Stoppard play, " Invention of Love" which deals with Housman's somewhat tortured, but extremelyproductive life. Glad that I did. The book stands by itself as topbiography. ... Read more

Product Description
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 complex person 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, publishing history, and literary allusion and echo. ... Read more

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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.
... Read more