Page "A. E. Housman" Paragraph 11

In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson could read them before his death.

These later poems, mostly written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but lack the consistency of his previously published work.

He published them as Last Poems ( 1922 ) because he felt his inspiration was exhausted and that he should not publish more in his lifetime.

This proved true.

After his death Housman's brother, Laurence, published further poems which appeared in More Poems ( 1936 ) and Collected Poems ( 1939 ).

Housman also wrote a parodic Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, in English, and humorous poems published posthumously under the title Unkind to Unicorns.