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Edward Housman, also known as A.E. Housman, was a British classical scholar and poet who was born in 1859 and died in 1936. He is best known for his collections of poems, "A Shropshire Lad" and "Last Poems," which are characterized by their melancholy tone and themes of loss and regret.

Housman was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England, the eldest of seven children. He was educated at King Edward's School in Birmingham and then went on to study at Oxford University, where he excelled in classical studies and was awarded a first-class honors degree in Greats.

After leaving Oxford, Housman pursued a career as a classical scholar, working as a professor at University College, London and later at Cambridge University. However, it was his poetry that brought him fame and enduring literary acclaim. "A Shropshire Lad," published in 1896, was a collection of 63 poems that explored themes of youth, love, and death. The poems, written in a simple and straightforward style, were inspired by Housman's own experiences and observations of life in rural England.

One of Housman's most famous poems, "To an Athlete Dying Young," reflects on the fleeting nature of fame and the importance of dying at the height of one's accomplishments. In this poem, Housman writes:

"The time you won your town the race We chaired you through the market-place; Man and boy stood cheering by, And home we brought you shoulder-high.

To-day, the road all runners come, Shoulder-high we bring you home, And set you at your threshold down, Townsman of a stiller town."

Housman's poetry is known for its simplicity and emotional depth, and his work has been widely anthologized and translated into many languages. Despite his success as a poet, Housman was a private and reclusive man who rarely gave interviews or made public appearances. He lived a solitary life, rarely traveling or socializing, and spent much of his time reading and writing.

In his later years, Housman published a second collection of poems, "Last Poems," which was released in 1922. This collection, which included some of his most famous works, including "Loveliest of Trees," "When I Was One-and-Twenty," and "The Lent Lily," continued to explore themes of loss and regret, and cemented Housman's reputation as one of the greatest poets of his time.

Edward Housman's poetry continues to be loved and admired by readers around the world for its timeless themes and beautiful language. His work is a testament to the enduring power of poetry to convey deep emotion and to speak to the human experience.

Alfred Edward Housman : Biography and Literary Works

edward housman

Sometime before, Housman had written a book on T he Manuscripts of Propertius,and Postgate had sponsored it to the Cambridge University Press. Between 1909 and 1911 George Butterworth produced settings in two collections or cycles, as Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, and Bredon Hill and other songs. Articles Collected The Classical Papers ofA. The desire, or the need, did not come upon him often, and it came usually when he was feeling ill or depressed; then whole lines and stanzas would present themselves to him without any effort, or any consciousness of composition on his part. According to Gow, Housman could never remember his students' names, maintaining that "had he burdened his memory by the distinction between Miss Jones and Miss Robinson, he might have forgotten that between the second and fourth declension. He regarded it as no part of his business to popularize the classics or even to attract students to the field.

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HOUSMAN, Alfred Edward

edward housman

During his years at University College Housman began the work that was to become his most renowned contribution to classical studies. These poems center around themes of pastoral beauty, unrequited love, fleeting youth, grief, death, and the patriotism of the common soldier. Controversy has long surrounded Housman and his labors. The 2009 novel Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy takes its title from Housman's poem "Reveille", and a line from Housman's poem XVI "How Clear, How Lovely Bright", was used for the title of the last Inspector Morse book The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter. He declined at least eight honorary doctorates,election to the British Academy, and, in 1929, the Order of Merit, always with greatcourtesy and, when offered by those he liked, with considerable charm.

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A. E. Housman

edward housman

A Shropshire Lad was written there. In 1877 he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics. To his students he appeared as a severe, reticent, remote authority. Housman continued pursuing classical studies independently and published scholarly articles on such authors as Horace , Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles. The poems are pervaded by deep pessimism and preoccupation with death, without religious consolation. Sometimes they wanted a little alteration, sometimes none; sometimes the lines needed in order to make a complete poem would come later, spontaneously or with 'a little coaxing'; sometimes he had to sit down and finish the poem with his head. In 1932, he brought out an editio minor.

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Alfred Edward Housman

edward housman

He was and may remain the last great textual critic. Housman's poetry influenced British music in a way comparable to that of Walt Whitman in the music of Delius, Vaughan Williams and others: Housman's works provided song texts, Whitman's the texts for larger choral works. It was a courtesy only accidentally given to the world at large, for Housman had little respect for mankind in general. Very few have proved able to surmount so disastrous a beginning in the classics, and no classical scholar has done so in as spectacular a fashion as Housman. Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again. Through its song-setting the poetry became closely associated with that era, and with Shropshire itself.

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Alfred Edward Housman: poems, essays, and short stories

edward housman

My purpose is to establish my own theory: to demolish the theories of others is only a necessary incident in the process. The eldest of seven children, A. Having heard Jowett lecture once, Housman never returned to hear him again. He endeavored, without conspicuous success, to continue his profession and, eventually, took to drink. Goold at University College wrote of Housman's scholarly accomplishments: "The legacy of Housman's scholarship is a thing of permanent value; and that value consists less in obvious results, the establishment of general propositions about Latin and the removal of scribal mistakes, than in the shining example he provides of a wonderful mind at work.

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Alfred Edward Housman : Read Poems by Poet Alfred Edward Housman

edward housman

He died, aged 77, three years later in Cambridge. John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics. Various documents link the phone number 706 245-9587 to different owners — Larry Teasley, edhousman fremont. In 1885, he tried to interest the Oxford University Press and Macmillan in an elaborate edition of Propertius. Due to that, he also did badly in the examinations.

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Trinity College Chapel

edward housman

Not improbably, it was with this article that he introduced himself to H. Ingram Bywater 1840-1914 and HerbertRichards 1848-1916 , for both of whom Housman latterly had a measure of esteem, do not seemthen to have come his way. In 1877, he attended St. He unexpectedly failed his final exams, but managed to pass the final year and later took a position as clerk in the Patent Office in London for ten years. Collected Poems and Selected Prose. After a brief preface, he listed about two hundred and fifty of his conjectures, without supporting argument, in the text of Propertius.

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A E Housman

edward housman

The critic was invited to supply it in his stead, and his text, composed in about a twelvemonth, was issued both in the Corpusand, with a preface and revised apparatus, as a separate volume. Housman: A Critical Biography New York, 1983; partly corrected impression, 1985. Soon after his birth, his family moved to Bromsgrove where he spent the early years of his life. Owen 1858-1940 for the Classical Review. He also wrote an orchestral tone poem on A Shropshire Lad first performed at Leeds Festival under Arthur Nikisch in 1912. John Sparrow found statements in a letter written late in Housman's life which describe how his poems came into existence: Poetry was for him.


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Alfred Edward Housman's Poems with Analysis, the Author's Quotes

edward housman

Cambridge Philological Society, 1889; presents. His brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers. This was followed by a detailed examination of the first elegy: a discussion with the subordinate purpose of showing that textual critics do not propose alterations without reasons. Although many classical scholars desire to interest students in the cultures of ancient Greece and Rome and to encourage research in the humanities, Housman did not share these ambitions. The road of danger, guilt, and shame: the lonely way of A. Edward Housman died, nearly insolvent, in 1894.

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