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.

'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

Introduction
Acknowledgements
Notes on Contributors
Housman's Level Tones; A.Burnett
The Critical Reception of A Shropshire Lad; B.F.Fisher
The Land of Lost Content; K.Jebb
Tacit Pledges; G.Hill
Ashes Under Uricon; Historicizing A.E.Housman, Reifying T.H.Huxley, Embracing Lucretius; K.Womack
A.E.Housman and Thomas Hardy; N.Page
Flowers to Fair: A Shropshire Lad's Legacy of Song; T.Hold
Housman's Manilius; G.P.Goold
Lewis Carroll in Shropshire; J.Bayley
The First Edition of A Shropshire Lad in Book Shop and Auction Room; P.G.Naiditch
A.E.Housman's Use of Biblical Narrative; C.Efrati
The Spirit of Haiku and A.E.Housman; T.Obata
A Select Bibliography; A.E.Housman
Index

ALAN W. HOLDEN Editor, since 1987, of the Housman Society Journal. Contributed memoir of Molly Holden (his late wife) in Selected Poems of Molly Holden.

J. ROY BIRCH is co-editor of both Housman Society Journal and Selected Comic Poems of Housman: 'Unkind to Unicorns'.