AE HOUSMAN

(1859-1936)

BACKGROUND

• Alfred Edward Housman

• born 3/26/59

• in Fockbury, Worcestershire, England

  • moved 1860 to nearby Bromsgrove

  • grew up, educated there

• oldest of 7 children

• taught them

  • (became a teacher)

• studied the Bible with his mother

• father = womanizer, solicitor

• *1871:  mother died

  • --> AEH:  her suffering = unjust (unjust suffering)

  • he was extremely close to her

  • she died on his 12th birthday

  • --> pessimism (in his poetry)

• poetry prizes at private secondary school

  • (2 consecutive yrs.)

• 1877: Oxford U. (St. John’s College) on a scholarship (see prizes)

  • dissatisfied with the quality of the education

  • --> skipped classes, taught himself, studied whom he wanted

  • founded & co-edited & wrote parodies of contemporary poems and fiction for Ye Round Table (undergraduate magazine)

  • homosexual desires:

    • fell in love with his heterosexual roommate (Moses Jackson),

    • a runner (see “To an Athlete Dying Young”), a life-long friend

  • --> *failed his Comprehensive Exam in the classics (BUT passed his final year)

  • --> returned home, taught school, worked in Government Patent Office (a civil service job), 10 years

BACKGROUND

• 1882-92:

  • determined to make up for Oxford failure, studied the Classics

  • wrote 20+ scholarly essays

  • applied for and received professorship at U. of London as Prof. of Latin (1892)

• 1893-95:

  • burst of creativity

  • had always written poems before now

  • now, 58 lyrics

• 1896:

  • published out of pocket A Shropshire Lad

• 1911:

  • professor of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge

  • held position until his death

• CLASSICIST:

  • Greek and Roman classics

  • gained renown for his editions of Juvenal, Lucan, and Manilius (Roman poets)

  • meticulous, scholarly, insightful, intelligent commentaries

POETRY

• form =

  • lyrics

• style =

  • simple, spare

    • though achieved through effort

• language =

  • simple, straightforward (rustic)

  • rhythm and sound of folk ballads

• subjects =

  • universal (love & death)

• tone:

  • pessimism (Romantic pessimism)

• poetry =

  • “to harmonize the sadness of the universe” AEH

• HARDY & HOUSMAN:

  • SIMPLICITY

    • of style

    • of language

  • influence on late 1940s, 1950s

  • **unlike Thomas Hardy, AEH wrote of the countryside without the experience

  • imitating the Classics, Latin

    • pastoral poetry;

    • stylized affectation

• published only 2 volumes of poetry:

  • A Shropshire Lad (1896)

  • and Last Poems (1922)

• *admired during his lifetime

  • more for his scholarly work

  • than his poetry

POETRY

A Shropshire Lad (1896):

• cycle of 63 poems

• written after the 1892 death of Adalbert Jackson (friend & companion)

• influences:

  • Heinrich Heine (poems)

  • Shakespeare (songs)

  • Scottish border ballads

• --> effect on style/his purpose:

  • techniques to express emotions clearly yet comfortably distant

  • persona = farm laborer

  • setting = Shropshire (a county he had not yet visited)

  • <famouspoetsandpoems.com>

• themes =

  • “pastoral beauty, unrequited love, fleeting youth, grief, death, & the patriotism of the common soldier”

• published at his own expense (see Hawthorne, Poe), after rejected several times

• book & poet gained popularity as England became involved in wars:

  • Boer War & World War I

  • b/c of its “nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers”

    • (see WAR POETRY)

  • --> contemporary composers “created musical settings for Housman’s work”

  • <poets.org>

Last Poems (1922):

• collection of old, unpublished poems

• most poems = written before 1910

• given to his dying friend (ex-roommate) Moses Jackson

• greater range of subject & form (greater than Shropshire)

• “When I was One and Twenty” (1896) advice

• “Loveliest of Trees” (1896) 80, cherry blossom

• “To an Athlete Dying Young” (1896) fame