A. E. Housman

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xix

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2. A. E. Housman’s ‘Level Tones’

   • Archie Burnett

   Pages 1-19

3. The Critical Reception of A Shropshire Lad

   • Benjamin F. Fisher

   Pages 20-36

4. The Land of Lost Content

   • Keith Jebb

   Pages 37-52

5. Tacit Pledges

   • Geoffrey Hill

   Pages 53-75

6. ‘Ashes under Uricon’: Historicizing A. E. Housman, Reifying T. H. Huxley, Embracing Lucretius

   • Kenneth Womack

   Pages 76-86

7. A. E. Housman and Thomas Hardy

   • Norman Page

   Pages 87-105

8. ‘Flowers to Fair’: A Shropshire Lad’s Legacy of Song

   • Trevor Hold

   Pages 106-133

9. Housman’s Manilius

   • G. P. Goold

   Pages 134-153

10. Lewis Carroll in Shropshire

    • John Bayley

    Pages 154-166

11. The First Edition of A Shropshire Lad in Bookshop and Auction Room

    • P. G. Naiditch

    Pages 167-187

12. A. E. Housman’s Use of Biblical Narrative

    • Carol Efrati

    Pages 188-209

13. The Spirit of Haiku and A. E. Housman

    • Takeshi Obata

    Pages 210-219

14. Back Matter

    Pages 220-225

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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.

Alan W. Holden has been editor, since 1987, of the Housman Society Journal.

J. Roy Birch is editor of The Selected Comic Poems of Housman: "Unkind to Unicorns."

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