Editing A. E. Housman

{{Short description|English classicist and poet (1859–1936)}}
{{redirect|Housman|other people with this surname|Housman (surname)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=December 2024}}
{{Infobox writer
| image            = Alfred Edward Housman.jpg
| caption          = Housman in 1910
| birth_name       = Alfred Edward Housman
| birth_date       = {{birth date|df=yes|1859|03|26}}
| birth_place      = [[Bromsgrove]], Worcestershire, England
| death_date       = {{Death date and age|df=yes|1936|04|30|1859|03|26}}
| death_place      = [[Cambridge]], England
| occupation       = {{Cslist|Classicist|poet}}
| alma_mater       = [[St John's College, Oxford]]
| period           = 
| genre            = [[Lyric poetry]]
| movement         = 
| notableworks     = ''[[A Shropshire Lad]]''
| spouse           = 
| partner          = 
| children         = 
| relatives        = {{Plainlist|
* [[Clemence Housman]] (sister)
* [[Laurence Housman]] (brother)
}}
| awards           = 
| signature        = Signature of A. E. Housman.svg
| website          = 
| portaldisp       = 
| name             = A. E. Housman
}}
'''Alfred Edward Housman''' ({{IPAc-en|ˈ|h|aʊ|s|m|ən}}; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936) was an English [[classics|classical scholar]] and poet.  He showed early promise as a student at the [[University of Oxford]], but he failed his final examination in ''[[literae humaniores]]'' and took employment as a [[patent examiner]] in London in 1882.  In his spare time he engaged in [[textual criticism]] of classical [[Ancient Greek|Greek]] and [[Latin]] texts, and his publications as an independent researcher earned him a high academic reputation and appointment as professor of Latin at [[University College London]] in 1892.  In 1911 he became the [[Kennedy Professor of Latin]] at the [[University of Cambridge]].  Today he is regarded as one of the foremost classicists of his age and one of the greatest classical scholars of any time.<ref>Charles Oscar Brink, ''English Classical Scholarship: Historical reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman,''  James Clarke & Co, Oxford, [[Oxford University Press]], New York, 1986 p.149</ref><ref Name="PF" /> His editions of [[Juvenal]], [[Marcus Manilius|Manilius]], and [[Lucan]] are still considered authoritative.

In 1896, Housman published ''[[A Shropshire Lad]]'', a cycle of poems marked by the author's pessimism and preoccupation with early death, which gradually acquired a wide readership and appealed particularly to a younger audience during [[World War I]].  Another collection, entitled ''[[Last Poems]]'', appeared in 1922.  Housman's poetry became popular for [[musical setting]]s.  Following his death, further poems from his notebooks were published by his brother [[Laurence Housman|Laurence]].

==Early life==
[[File:Birthplace of A.E. Housman.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Valley House, Housman's birthplace]]
[[File:Fockbury House or The Clock House.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|The site of the 17th-century Fockbury House (later known as The Clock House). Home of Housman from 1873 to 1878]]
[[File:Perry Hall, Home of A.E. Housman.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|Home of Housman from 1860 to 1873 and again from 1878 to 1882. His younger brother Laurence was born here in 1865.]]

The eldest of seven children, Housman was born at Valley House in Fockbury, a hamlet on the outskirts of [[Bromsgrove]] in Worcestershire, to Sarah Jane (née Williams, married 17 June 1858 in [[Woodchester]], Gloucester)<ref>"[https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/NLCJ-D3D England Marriages, 1538–1973 for Edward Housman]", Baptism record via Family Search.org</ref> and Edward Housman (whose family came from [[Lancaster, Lancashire|Lancaster]]), and was baptised on 24 April 1859 at Christ Church, in [[Catshill]].<ref>"[https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/N5YC-NZZ England Births and Christenings, 1538–1975 for Alfred Edward Housman]", Baptism record via Family Search.org</ref><ref>{{Cite web |url=http://christchurch.bromsgrove.church/ |title=Christ Church Catshill |access-date=22 November 2016 |archive-date=30 March 2017 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170330184158/http://christchurch.bromsgrove.church/ |url-status=dead }}</ref><ref Name="Poets">{{cite web| url = http://www.poets.org/poet.php/prmPID/631| title = Profile at Poets.org}}</ref> His mother died on his twelfth birthday, and his father, a country solicitor, then [[Cousin marriage|married an elder cousin]], Lucy, in 1873. Two of his siblings became prominent writers, sister [[Clemence Housman]] and brother [[Laurence Housman]].

Housman was educated at [[King Edward's School, Birmingham|King Edward's School]] in [[Birmingham]] and later [[Bromsgrove School]], where he revealed his academic promise and won prizes for his poems.<ref Name="Poets" /><ref>{{cite web|title=Housman's 150th birthday|url=http://www.bbc.co.uk/shropshire/content/articles/2009/01/30/housman_feature.shtml|publisher=BBC|access-date=12 January 2017}}</ref> In 1877, he won an open scholarship to [[St John's College, Oxford]], and went there to study [[classics]].<ref Name="Poets" /> Although [[introversion|introverted]] by nature, Housman formed strong friendships with two roommates, Moses John Jackson (1858 – 14 January 1923) and [[Alfred W. Pollard|A. W. Pollard]]. Though Housman obtained a first in classical [[Moderations]] in 1879, his dedication to textual analysis led him to neglect the ancient history and philosophy that formed part of the [[Literae Humaniores|Greats]] curriculum. Accordingly, he failed his [[Final examination|Finals]] and had to return humiliated in [[Michaelmas term]] to resit the exam and at least gain a lower-level [[Academic degree#United Kingdom|pass degree]].<ref>{{cite book|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=hZb90uvtg20C&q=housman+%22pass+degree%22&pg=PA202|title=''A. E. Housman at University College, London: The Election of 1892''|author=P. G. Naiditch|year=1988|publisher=BRILL |isbn=9004088482|access-date=31 December 2017}}</ref><ref Name ="Poets" /> Though some attribute Housman's unexpected performance in his exams directly to his unrequited feelings for Jackson,<ref>Cunningham (2000) p. 981.</ref> most biographers adduce more obvious causes. Housman was indifferent to philosophy and overconfident in his exceptional gifts, and he spent too much time with his friends. He may also have been distracted by news of his father's desperate illness.<ref>Norman Page, Macmillan, London (1983) ''A. E. Housman: A Critical Biography'' pp. 43–46</ref><ref>Richard Perceval Graves, ''A. E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet'' [[Charles Scribner's Sons]], New York (1979) pp. 52–55.</ref><ref>Charles Oscar Brink, ''English Classical Scholarship'' p. 152</ref>

After Oxford, Jackson went to work as a [[patent examiner|clerk]] in the [[Patent Office]] in London and he also arranged a job there for Housman.<ref Name="Poets" /> The two shared a flat at 82 Talbot Road,<ref>{{Cite web |title=A. E. Housman – W2 |url=https://www.londonremembers.com/memorials/a-e-housman-w2 |access-date=2024-12-08 |website=London Remembers |language=en}}</ref> [[Bayswater]], with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885, when Housman moved to lodgings of his own, probably after Jackson responded to a declaration of love by telling Housman that he could not reciprocate his feelings.<ref>Summers (1995) p. 371</ref> Two years later, Jackson moved to India, placing more distance between himself and Housman. When he returned briefly to England in 1889 to marry, Housman was not invited to the wedding and knew nothing about it until the couple had left the country. Adalbert Jackson died in 1892 and Housman commemorated him in a poem published as "XLII – A.J.J." of ''[[More Poems]]'' (1936).

Meanwhile, Housman pursued his classical studies independently, and published scholarly articles on [[Horace]], [[Propertius]], [[Ovid]], [[Aeschylus]], [[Euripides]] and [[Sophocles]].<ref Name="Poets" /> He also completed an edition of [[Propertius]], which however was rejected by both [[Oxford University Press]] and [[Macmillan Publishers|Macmillan]] in 1885, and was destroyed after his death. He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered and accepted the professorship of Latin at [[University College London]] (UCL).<ref Name="Poets" /> When, during his tenure, an immensely rare [[Coverdale Bible]] of 1535 was discovered in the UCL library and presented to the Library Committee, Housman (who had become an atheist while at Oxford)<ref>Blocksidge, Martin. ''A. E. Housman: A Single Life''. N.p.: n.p., 2016</ref> remarked that it would be better to sell it to "buy some really useful books with the proceeds".<ref>{{cite book|last1=Ricks|first1=Christopher|title=A. E. Housman. ''Collected Poems and Selected Prose''|date=1989|publisher=Penguin|location=Harmondsworth|page=18}}</ref>

==Later life==
Although Housman's early work and his responsibilities as a professor included both [[Latin]] and [[Greek language|Greek]], he began to specialise in Latin poetry. When asked later why he had stopped writing about Greek verse, he responded, "I found that I could not attain to excellence in both."<ref>Gow (Cambridge 1936) p. 5</ref> In 1911 he took the [[Kennedy Professorship of Latin]] at [[Trinity College, Cambridge]], where he remained for the rest of his life.

Between 1903 and 1930, Housman published his critical edition of [[Marcus Manilius|Manilius's]] ''Astronomicon'' in five volumes. He also edited [[Satires of Juvenal|Juvenal]] (1905) and [[Lucan]] (1926). G. P. Goold, Classics Professor at University College, wrote of his predecessor's accomplishments that "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 … He was and may remain the last great textual critic".<ref Name="PF" /> In the eyes of [[Harry Eyres]], however, Housman was "famously dry" as a professor, and his influence led to a scholarly style in the study of literature and poetry that was philological and without emotion.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Eyres |first=Harry |title=Horace and me: life lessons from an ancient poet |publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux |year=2013 |isbn=978-0-374-17274-9 |pages=69–70}}</ref>

[[File:Housman Grave Clip2.jpg|left|thumb|upright=1.3|Housman's grave marker]]
Many colleagues were unnerved by Housman's scathing attacks on those he thought guilty of shoddy scholarship.<ref Name="Poets" /> In his paper "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921) he wrote: "A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like [[Isaac Newton|Newton]] investigating the motion of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas". He declared many of his contemporary scholars to be stupid, lazy, vain, or all three, saying: "Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders, and brains, not pudding, in your head".<ref name="PF">{{Cite web|title=A. E. Housman|url=https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/a-e-housman|date=2020-05-28|publisher=Poetry Foundation|language=en|access-date=2020-05-28}}</ref><ref>"The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism", (1921) Housman</ref>

His younger colleague, [[A. S. F. Gow]], quoted examples of these attacks, noting that they "were often savage in the extreme".<ref>Gow (Cambridge 1936) p. 24</ref> Gow also related how Housman intimidated students, sometimes reducing the women to tears. According to Gow, Housman could never remember the names of female students, 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". Among the more notable students at his Cambridge lectures was [[Enoch Powell]],<ref>Gow (Cambridge 1936) p. 18</ref> one of whose own Classical emendations was later complimented by Housman.<ref>''The Letters of A. E. Housman'', Clarendon Press 2007, [https://books.google.com/books?id=2CeQDwAAQBAJ&dq=%22Enoch+Powell%22+Housman&pg=RA1-PA333 p.333]</ref>

[[File:Housman Grave.JPG|thumb|upright=1.6|Housman's grave at St Laurence's Church in [[Ludlow]]]]
In his private life, Housman enjoyed country walks, [[gastronomy]], air travel and making frequent visits to France, where he read "books which were banned in Britain as pornographic"<ref>Graves (1979) p. 155.</ref> but he struck [[A. C. Benson]], a fellow don, as being "descended from a long line of maiden aunts".<ref name="autogenerated1">Critchley (1988).</ref> His feelings about his poetry were ambivalent and he certainly treated it as secondary to his scholarship. He did not speak in public about his poems until 1933, when he gave a lecture "The Name and Nature of Poetry", arguing there that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than to the intellect.

Housman died, aged 77, in Cambridge. His ashes are buried just outside [[St Laurence's Church, Ludlow]]. A cherry tree was planted there in his memory (see ''A Shropshire Lad'' II) and replaced by the Housman Society in 2003 with a new cherry tree nearby.<ref Name="Poets" /><ref>Wilson, Scott. ''Resting Places: The Burial Sites of More Than 14,000 Famous Persons'', 3d ed.: 2 (Kindle Location 22231). McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. Kindle Edition</ref>

==Poetry==

===''A Shropshire Lad''===
{{Main|A Shropshire Lad}}
{{Quote box |width=300px |align=right |bgcolor=#FFFFF0 | salign=right
 |quote  =<poem>
Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,
And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide.

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.<ref>{{cite book |last=Housman |first=A. E. |author-link=A. E. Housman |title=A Shropshire Lad |date=1906 |publisher=John Lane Company |location=New York |url=https://archive.org/details/shropshirelad00hous |pages=[https://archive.org/details/shropshirelad00hous/page/3 3]-4}}</ref></poem>
|source =—''A Shropshire Lad'':<br>"[[Loveliest of trees, the cherry now]]"}}

During his years in London, Housman completed ''A Shropshire Lad'', a cycle of 63 poems. After one publisher had turned it down, he helped subsidise its publication in 1896. At first selling slowly, it rapidly became a lasting success. Its appeal to English musicians had helped to make it widely known before [[World War I]], when its themes struck a powerful chord with English readers. The book has been in print continuously since May 1896.<ref>Peter Parker, [https://books.google.com/books?id=p7dvBQAAQBAJ&pg=PP1 ''Housman Country''], London 2016, Chapter 1</ref>

The poems are marked by pessimism and preoccupation with death, without religious consolation (Housman had become an atheist while still an undergraduate). Housman wrote many of them while living in [[Highgate]], London, before ever visiting Shropshire, which he presented in an idealised pastoral light as his 'land of lost content'.<ref>A. E. Housman, ''A Shropshire Lad'', XL</ref> Housman himself acknowledged that "No doubt I have been unconsciously influenced by the Greeks and Latins, but [the] chief sources of which I am conscious are Shakespeare's songs, the Scottish Border ballads, and [[Heinrich Heine|Heine]]".<ref>Richard Stokes, ''The Penguin Book of English Song'', 2016, [https://books.google.com/books?id=EoKmCgAAQBAJ&dq=%22I+was+born+in+Worcestershire%2C+not+Shropshire%2C+where+I+have+never+spent+much+time.+%22&pg=RA3-PR51 p. li]</ref>

===Later collections===
Housman began collecting a new set of poems after the First World War. His early work was an influence on many British [[War Poets|poets]] who became famous by their writing about the war, and he wrote several poems as occasional verse to commemorate the war dead. This included his ''Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries'', honouring the [[British Expeditionary Force (World War I)|British Expeditionary Force]], an elite but small force of professional soldiers sent to Belgium at the start of the war. In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson could read them before his death.<ref Name ="Poets" /> These later poems, mostly written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in ''A Shropshire Lad'' but lack its consistency. He published his new collection as ''[[Last Poems]]'' (1922), feeling that his inspiration was exhausted and that he should not publish more in his lifetime.

After Housman's death in 1936, his brother, [[Laurence Housman|Laurence]] published further poems in ''More Poems'' (1936), ''A. E .H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother'' (1937), and ''Collected Poems'' (1939). ''A. E. H.'' includes humorous verse such as a parody of [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow|Longfellow's]] poem [[Excelsior (Longfellow)|''Excelsior'']]. Housman also wrote a parodic [[s:Fragment of a Greek Tragedy|''Fragment of a Greek Tragedy'']], in English, first published in 1883 in ''The Bromsgrovian'', the magazine of his old school, and frequently reprinted.<ref>{{cite journal |title=Fragment of a Greek Tragedy |author=A.E.H |journal=The Bromsgrovian |volume=2 |issue=5 |date=8 June 1883 |pages=107–109 |url=https://www.bromsgrove-schoolarchive.co.uk/Filename.ashx?tableName=ta_publications&columnName=filename&recordId=395}}</ref><ref>{{cite journal |title=A. E. Housman's 'Fragment of a Greek Tragedy' |last=Marcellino |first=Ralph |journal=The Classical Journal |volume=48 |issue=5 |year=1995 |pages=171–178 |jstor=3293270 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3293270}}</ref>

[[John Hanbury Angus Sparrow|John Sparrow]] quoted a letter written late in Housman's life that described the genesis of his poems:
{{Blockquote | Poetry was for him …'a morbid secretion', as the pearl is for the oyster. 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. 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.  That... was a long and laborious process.<ref Name="Sparrow" />}}

Sparrow himself adds, "How difficult it is to achieve a satisfactory analysis may be judged by considering the last poem in ''A Shropshire Lad''. Of its four stanzas, Housman tells us that two were 'given' him ready made; one was coaxed forth from his subconsciousness an hour or two later; the remaining one took months of conscious composition. No one can tell for certain which was which."<ref Name="Sparrow">''Collected Poems'' Penguin, Harmondsworth (1956), preface by John Sparrow.</ref>

===''De Amicitia'' (Of Friendship)===

In 1942, Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the [[British Library]], with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson.<ref>Summers ed. 1995, 371.</ref> Despite the conservative nature of the times and his own caution in public life, Housman was quite open in his poetry, and especially in ''A Shropshire Lad'', about his deeper sympathies. Poem XXX of that sequence, for instance, speaks of how "Fear contended with desire": "Others, I am not the first, / Have willed more mischief than they durst". In ''More Poems'', he buries his love for Moses Jackson in the very act of commemorating it, as his feelings of love are not reciprocated and must be carried unfulfilled to the grave:<ref>Summers (1995) p372.</ref>

{{poemquote|
Because I liked you better
    Than suits a man to say,
It irked you, and I promised
    To throw the thought away.}}
[[File:Moses Jackson.jpg|thumb|upright=0.9|Moses Jackson (1858–1923) as an undergraduate c. 1880]]
{{poemquote|
To put the world between us
    We parted, stiff and dry;
"Good-bye," said you, "forget me."
    "I will, no fear," said I.

If here, where clover whitens
    The dead man's knoll, you pass,
And no tall flower to meet you
    Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming
    The heart no longer stirred,
And say the lad that loved you
    Was one that kept his word.<ref>{{cite book |last=Housman |first=A. E. |author-link=A. E. Housman |title=More Poems |date=1936 |publisher=A. A. Knopf |location=New York |pages=[https://archive.org/details/morepoems0000hous/page/44 44]-45 |url=https://archive.org/details/morepoems0000hous|url-access=registration }}</ref>}}

His poem "Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?", written after the trial of [[Oscar Wilde]], addressed more general attitudes towards homosexuals.<ref>Housman (1937) p213.</ref> In the poem the prisoner is suffering "for the colour of his hair", a natural quality that, in a coded reference to homosexuality, is reviled as "nameless and abominable" (recalling the legal phrase ''peccatum illud horribile, inter Christianos non nominandum'', "that horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians").

==Musical settings==
Housman's poetry, especially ''A Shropshire Lad'', was set to music by many British, and in particular English, composers in the first half of the 20th century. The national, pastoral and traditional elements of his style resonated with similar trends in English music.<ref name=grove>{{cite book| url = https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000013411| title = Palmer, Christopher. 'Housman, A(lfred) E(dward)', in ''Grove Music Online'' (2001)| year = 2001| doi = 10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.13411| isbn = 978-1-56159-263-0| last1 = Palmer| first1 = Christopher| last2 = Banfield| first2 = Stephen}}</ref> In 1904, the cycle ''A Shropshire Lad'' was set by [[Arthur Somervell]], who in 1898 had begun to develop the concept of the English [[song-cycle]] in his version of [[Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson|Tennyson]]'s "[[Maud and other poems|Maud]]".<ref>{{cite web| url = http://www.operatoday.com/content/2020/06/two_song_cycles.php| title = 'Two Song Cycles by Arthur Somervell' in ''Opera Today'', 2 June 2020}}</ref> [[Stephen Banfield]] believes it was acquaintance with Somervell's cycle that led other composers to set Housman: [[Ralph Vaughan Williams]] is likely to have attended the first performance at the [[Aeolian Hall (London)|Aeolian Hall]] on 3 February 1905.<ref>{{cite book| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=zWPvwuOGA4EC&q=Housman| title = Banfield, Stephen. ''Sensibility and English Song'' (1985), p 233-4| isbn = 9780521379441| last1 = Banfield| first1 = Stephen| year = 1985| publisher = Cambridge University Press}}</ref> His well-known cycle of six songs ''[[On Wenlock Edge (song cycle)|On Wenlock Edge]]'', for [[string quartet]], [[tenor]] and piano, was published in 1909. Between 1909 and 1911, [[George Butterworth]] produced settings in two collections, ''[[Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad]]'' and ''[[Bredon Hill and Other Songs]]''. He also wrote the orchestral [[tone poem]] ''A Shropshire Lad'', first performed at [[Leeds]] Festival in 1912.<ref>[[Arthur Eaglefield Hull]], ''A Dictionary of Modern Music and Musicians'' Dent, London (1924), 73.</ref>

[[Ivor Gurney]] was another composer who made renowned settings of Housman's poems. Towards the end of [[World War I]], he was working on his cycle ''Ludlow and Teme'', for voice and string quartet (published in 1919),<ref>Kate Kennedy, "Ambivalent Englishness: Ivor Gurney's song cycle Ludlow and Teme", ''First World War Studies'', Volume 2, 2011, [http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/19475020.2011.555471?journalCode=rfww20 – Issue 1: Literature and Music of the First World War]</ref> and went on to compose the eight-song cycle ''The Western Playland'' in 1921.<ref>{{Cite web|title=The Western Playland|url=https://www.lieder.net/lieder/assemble_texts.html?SongCycleId=5|website=The LiederNet Archive|access-date=2020-05-28}}</ref> One more who set Housman songs during this period was [[John Ireland (composer)|John Ireland]] in the song cycle, ''[[The Land of Lost Content (John Ireland)|The Land of Lost Content]]'' (1920{{ndash}}21). [[Charles Wilfred Orr]] produced 24 Housman settings in songs and song cycles composed from the 1920s into the 1950s.<ref>[[Trevor Hold]]. ''Parry to Finzi: Twenty English Song Composers'' (2007), Chap. 17, pp. 314-329</ref> Even composers not directly associated with the 'pastoral' tradition, such as [[Arnold Bax]], [[Lennox Berkeley]] and [[Arthur Bliss]], were attracted to Housman's poetry.

Housman's attitude to musical interpretations of his poetry, and indeed to music in general, was either indifference or torment. He told his friend Percy Withers that he knew nothing of music and it meant nothing to him. Withers once played him a record of the Vaughan Williams setting, but realised he had made a mistake when he saw the look of disgust on the poet's face.<ref>Withers, ''A Buried Life: Personal Recollections of A.E. Housman'', 1940, quoted in John Gross, ed., ''The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes'', 2006, p. 208</ref> Nevertheless, by 1976, a catalogue listed 400 musical settings of Housman's poems.<ref name=grove/> As of 2024, Lieder Net Archive records 678 settings of 188 texts.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Authors starting with the letter H|url=https://www.lieder.net/lieder/get_name_list.html?Type=Authors&Letter=H|website=The LiederNet Archive|access-date=2024-11-30}}</ref>

==Commemorations==
The earliest commemoration of Housman was in the chapel of Trinity College in Cambridge, where there is a memorial brass on the south wall.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Alfred Edward Housman|url=http://trinitycollegechapel.com/about/memorials/brasses/housman/|website=Trinity College Chapel|access-date=2024-03-20}}</ref> The Latin inscription was composed by his colleague there, [[A. S. F. Gow]], who was also the author of a biographical and bibliographical sketch published immediately following his death.<ref>''A.E. Housman: Classical Scholar'', Bloomsbury 2009, N. Hopkinson, [https://books.google.com/books?id=gV8BAQAAQBAJ&dq=Housman+memorial+brass++trinity+college&pg=PT251 "Housman and J.P. Postgate"]</ref> Translated into English, the memorial reads:
{{Blockquote|This inscription commemorates Alfred Edward Housman, who was for twenty-five years Kennedy Professor of Latin and Fellow of the College. Following in [[Richard Bentley|Bentley]]'s footsteps he corrected the transmitted text of the Latin poets with so keen an intelligence and so ample a stock of learning, and chastised the sloth of editors with such sharp mockery, that he takes his place as the virtual second founder of these studies. He was also a poet who, with a slender sheaf of verses, claimed for himself a secure place on our Helicon. He died on 30 April 1936 at the age of seventy-six.<ref>In its original Latin the plaque reads: {{smaller|HOC TITVLO COMMEMORATVR / ALFRED EDWARD HOUSMAN / PER XXV ANNOS LINGVAE LATINAE PROFESSOR KENNEDIANVS / ET HVIVS COLLEGII SOCIVS / QVI BENTLEII INSISTENS VESTIGIIS / TEXTVM TRADITVM POETARVM LATINORVM / TANTO INGENII ACVMINE TANTIS DOCTRINAE COPIIS / EDITORVM SOCORDIAM / TAM ACRI CAVILLATIONE CASTIGAVIT / VT HORVM STVDIORVM PAENE REFORMATOR EXSTITERIT / IDEM POETA / TENVI CARMINVM FASCICVLO / SEDEM SIBI TVTAM IN HELICONE NOSTRO VINDICAVIT / OBIIT PRID.KAL.MAI./ A.S.MDCCCCXXXVI AETATIS SVAE LXXVII}}</ref>}}

[[File:Refurbished A. E. Housman statue Sept 2015.jpg|thumb|upright=1.05|Housman statue in Bromsgrove]]
From 1947, University College London's academic common room was dedicated to his memory as the Housman Room.<ref>{{cite web|title=History of the ASCR|url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/ascr/history|website=UCL|access-date=14 July 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170217201055/http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ascr/history|archive-date=17 February 2017|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[Blue plaque]]s followed later elsewhere, the first being on Byron Cottage in Highgate in 1969, recording the fact that ''A Shropshire Lad'' was written there. More followed, placed on his Worcestershire birthplace, his homes and school in Bromsgrove.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Places, subjects, or plaques matching "A. E. Housman"|url=http://openplaques.org/search|website=Open Plaques|language=en-GB|access-date=2020-05-28}}</ref> The latter were encouraged by the Housman Society, which was founded in the town in 1973.<ref>''Housman Society Newsletter'' 38,  "Early history of the Society", [http://www.housman-society.co.uk/sites/housman-society.co.uk/files/pubs/38-housman-newsletter.pdf pp. 7–8] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151001155621/http://www.housman-society.co.uk/sites/housman-society.co.uk/files/pubs/38-housman-newsletter.pdf |date=1 October 2015 }}</ref> Another initiative was the statue in Bromsgrove High Street, showing the poet striding with walking stick in hand. The work of local sculptor Kenneth Potts, it was unveiled on 22 March 1985.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Statue to A. E. Housman|url=http://www.pmsa.org.uk/pmsa-database/5808/|website=Public Monuments and Sculpture Association|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150924074859/http://www.pmsa.org.uk/pmsa-database/5808/|archive-date=2015-09-24|access-date=2020-05-28}}</ref>

The blue plaques in Worcestershire were set up on the centenary of ''A Shropshire Lad'' in 1996. In September of the same year, a memorial window lozenge was dedicated at [[Poets' Corner]] in [[Westminster Abbey]]<ref>{{Cite web|title=A. E. Housman|url=https://www.westminster-abbey.org/abbey-commemorations/commemorations/a-e-housman|website=Westminster Abbey|language=en|access-date=2020-05-28}}</ref> The following year saw the première of [[Tom Stoppard]]'s play ''[[The Invention of Love]]'', whose subject is the relationship between Housman and Moses Jackson.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Clapp|first=Susannah|author-link=Susannah Clapp |date=1997-10-05|title=Susannah Clapp on Stoppard's The Invention of Love|language=en-GB|work=The Observer|url=https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/1997/oct/05/features.review7|access-date=2020-05-28|issn=0029-7712}}</ref>

As the 150th anniversary of his birth approached, [[London University]] inaugurated its Housman lectures on classical subjects in 2005, initially given every second year then annually after 2011.<ref>{{Cite web|title=Housman Lectures|url=https://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/news-events/events/housman-lectures|date=2018-11-15|website=UCL Department of Greek & Latin|language=en|access-date=2020-05-28|archive-date=8 March 2021|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210308194927/https://www.ucl.ac.uk/classics/news-events/events/housman-lectures|url-status=dead}}</ref> The anniversary itself in 2009 saw the publication of a new edition of ''A Shropshire Lad'', including pictures from across Shropshire taken by local photographer Gareth Thomas.<ref>{{Cite web|title=A Shropshire Lad|url=http://www.merlinunwin.co.uk/bookDetails.asp?bookId=91|website=Merlin Unwin Books|language=en|access-date=2020-05-28|archive-date=20 March 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170320052532/http://www.merlinunwin.co.uk/bookDetails.asp?bookId=91|url-status=dead}}</ref> Among other events, there were performances of Vaughan Williams's ''On Wenlock Edge'' and Ivor Gurney's ''Ludlow and Teme'' at St Laurence's Church in Ludlow.<ref>"A. E. Housman: 150th birth anniversary", ''Shropshire Life'', [http://www.shropshirelifemagazine.co.uk/people/a_e_housman_150th_birth_anniversary_1_1633701  21 April 2007] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170320052725/http://www.shropshirelifemagazine.co.uk/people/a_e_housman_150th_birth_anniversary_1_1633701 |date=20 March 2017 }}</ref>

==Works==

===Poetry collections===
* ''[[A Shropshire Lad]]'' (1896)
* ''[[Last Poems]]'' (1922, Henry Holt & Company)
* ''A Shropshire Lad: Authorized Edition'' (1924, Henry Holt & Company)
* ''[[More Poems]]'' (1936, Barclays)
* ''Collected Poems'' (1940, Henry Holt & Company)
* ''Collected Poems'' (1939); the poems included in this volume but not the three above are known as ''Additional Poems''. The Penguin edition of 1956 includes an introduction by John Sparrow.
* ''Manuscript Poems: Eight Hundred Lines of Hitherto Uncollected Verse from the Author's Notebooks'', ed. Tom Burns Haber (1955)
* ''A. E. Housman: Collected Poems and Selected Prose'', ed. [[Christopher Ricks]] (1988, Allen Lane)
* ''Unkind to Unicorns: Selected Comic Verse'', ed. J. Roy Birch (1995; 2nd ed. 1999)
* ''The Poems of A. E. Housman'', ed. Archie Burnett (1997)
* ''A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems'' (2010, Penguin Classics)

===Classical scholarship===
* ''[[P. Ovidi Nasonis]] Ibis'' (1894. In J. P. Postgate's "Corpus Poetarum Latinorum")
* ''[[Marcus Manilius|M. Manilii]] [[Astronomica (Manilius)|Astronomica]]'' (1903–1930; 2nd ed. 1937; 5 vols.)
* ''[[Juvenal|D. Iunii Iuuenalis]] [[Satires of Juvenal|Saturae]]: editorum in usum edidit'' (1905; 2nd ed. 1931)
* ''[[Lucan|M. Annaei Lucani]], [[Pharsalia|Belli Ciuilis]] Libri Decem: editorum in usum edidit'' (1926; 2nd ed. 1927)
* ''The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman'', ed. J. Diggle and F. R. D. Goodyear (1972; 3 vols.)
* "Housman's Latin Inscriptions", William White, ''[[The Classical Journal]]'' (1955) 159–166

===Published lectures===
These lectures are listed by date of delivery, with date of first publication given separately if different.
* Introductory Lecture (1892)
* "[[Algernon Charles Swinburne|Swinburne]]" (1910; published 1969)
* Cambridge Inaugural Lecture (1911; published 1969 as "The Confines of Criticism")
* "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921; published 1922)
* "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (1933)

===Prose collections===
''Selected Prose'', edited by John Carter, Cambridge University Press, 1961

===Collected letters===
* ''The Letters of A. E. Housman'', ed. Henry Maas (1971)
* ''The Letters of A. E. Housman'', ed. Archie Burnett (2007)

==Footnotes==
{{reflist}}

==Sources==
* [[Julian Critchley|Critchley, Julian]], 'Homage to a lonely lad', ''Weekend Telegraph'' (UK), 23 April 1988.
* Cunningham, Valentine ed., ''The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics'' (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
* Gow, A. S. F., ''A. E. Housman: A Sketch Together with a List of his Writings and Indexes to his Classical Papers'' (Cambridge 1936)
* Graves, Richard Perceval, ''A.E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p.&nbsp;155
* Housman, Laurence, ''A. E .H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother'' (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937)
* Page, Norman, 'Housman, Alfred Edward (1859–1936)', ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
* Palmer, Christopher and Stephen Banfield, [https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000013411?rskey=bkKm6P&result=1 'A. E. Housman'], ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' (London: Macmillan, 2001)
* Richardson, Donna, "The Can of Ail: A. E. Housman's Moral Irony", ''Victorian Poetry'', Volume 48, Number 2, Summer 2010 (267–285)
* Shaw, Robin, "Housman's Places" (The Housman Society, 1995)
* Summers, Claude J. ed., ''The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage'' (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995)

==Further reading==
* Blocksidge, Martin. ''A. E. Housman : A Single Life'' (Sussex Academic Press, 2016) {{ISBN|978-1-84519-844-2}}
* Brink, C. O. [https://web.archive.org/web/20090105225952/http://www.lutterworth.com/jamesclarke/jc/titles/engclass.htm Lutterworth.com], English Classical Scholarship: Historical Reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman, James Clarke & Co (2009), {{ISBN|978-0-227-17299-5}}
* Efrati, C. ''The road of danger, guilt, and shame: the lonely way of A. E. Housman'' (Associated University Presse, 2002) {{ISBN|0-8386-3906-2}}
* Gardner, Philip, ed. ''A. E. Housman: The Critical Heritage'', a collection of reviews and essays on Housman's poetry (London: Routledge 1992)
* Holden, A. W. and Birch, J. R. ''A. E Housman – A Reassessment'' (Palgrave Macmillan, London, 1999)
* Housman, Laurence. ''De Amicitia'', with annotation by John Carter.  ''Encounter'' (October 1967, pp.&nbsp;33–40).
* Parker, Peter. ''Housman country : into the heart of England'' (Little, Brown, 2016) {{ISBN|978-1-4087-0613-8}}

==External links==
{{wikiquote}}
{{wikisource author}}
{{Commons category}}
* {{NPG name}}
* [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v29/n13/frank-kermode/nothing-for-ever-and-ever ''London Review of Books'' review of  "The Letters of A.E. Housman" 5 July 2007]
* [http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/shropshire/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_8105000/8105367.stm BBC Profile 24 June 2009]
* [https://www.news.co.uk/ "Star man"]: An article in the ''TLS'' by Robert Douglas Fairhurst, 20 June 2007
* [http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2001/02/19/010219crat_Lane_atlarge  "Lost Horizon: The sad and savage wit of A. E. Housman" ''New Yorker'' article (5 pages) by Anthony Lane 19 February 2001]
* [https://www.housman-society.co.uk/ The Housman Society]
* [http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/speccoll/guides/aehousman.shtml The Papers of A. E. Housman, Bryn Mawr College Special Collections] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304061530/http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/speccoll/guides/aehousman.shtml |date=4 March 2016 }}
* {{usurped|1=[https://web.archive.org/web/20110807043040/http://www.johnwheater.net/Sounds/JwHousman.mp3 Recording of part of the 1996 Shropshire Lad centenary reading by the Housman Society]}}
* [http://www.aristarchus.unige.net/CPhCl/en/Database Catalogus Philologorum Classicorum]
* {{PM20|FID=pe/008235}}
* {{OL_author|id=OL48862A}}

===Poems===
* {{gutenberg author| id=1852}}
* {{FadedPage|id=Housman, A. E. (Alfred Edward)|name=A. E. Housman|author=yes}}
* {{Librivox author |id=1173}}
* [http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/a-e-housman Profile and poems at Poetry Foundation]
* [https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~martinh/poems/complete_housman.html Complete poems of A. E. Housman]
* [http://www.eng-poetry.ru/english/Poet.php?PoetId=45 Poems by A. E. Housman at English Poetry]

{{s-start}}
{{s-aca}}
{{s-bef|before= [[John E. B. Mayor]]}}
{{s-ttl|title=[[Kennedy Professor of Latin]] [[University of Cambridge]]|years=1911–36}}
{{s-aft|after=[[William Blair Anderson]]}}
{{s-end}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Housman, A. E.}}
[[Category:1859 births]]
[[Category:1936 deaths]]
[[Category:19th-century English poets]]
[[Category:19th-century English writers]]
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[[Category:20th-century English LGBTQ people]]
[[Category:Academics of University College London]]
[[Category:Alumni of St John's College, Oxford]]
[[Category:British Latinists]]
[[Category:Burials in Shropshire]]
[[Category:English atheists]]
[[Category:English classical scholars]]
[[Category:English male poets]]
[[Category:Fellows of Trinity College, Cambridge]]
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[[Category:English LGBTQ poets]]
[[Category:Kennedy Professors of Latin]]
[[Category:Members of the University of Cambridge faculty of classics]]
[[Category:Classical scholars of the University of Cambridge]]
[[Category:People educated at Bromsgrove School]]
[[Category:People educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham]]
[[Category:People from Bromsgrove]]
[[Category:Victorian poets]]
[[Category:British humorous poets]]
[[Category:War poets]]
[[Category:Gay poets]]