Alfred Edward Housman (; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936 ), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.

* Page, Norman, ‘ Housman, Alfred Edward ( 1859 – 1936 )’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography ( Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004 )

* March 26 – Alfred Edward Housman, English poet ( d. 1936 )

* February 20 – Laurence Housman, English playwright and writer ( b. 1865 )

* April 30 – Alfred Edward Housman, English poet ( b. 1859 )

* George Housman Thomas ( 1824 – 1868 ), English painter and illustrator

A Shropshire Lad is a cycle of sixty-three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman ( 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936 ).

What Lucas wrote about Housman ’ s Name and Nature of Poetry in 1933 ( though he contested some of its ideas ) sums up what he himself aspired to as a literary critic: "… the kind of critical writing that best justifies itself before the brevity of life ; that itself adds new data to our experience as well as arguing about the old ; that happily combines, in a word, philosophy with autobiography, psychology with a touch of poetry – of the ‘ poetic ’ imagination.

Leonard is a three-time Tony Award nominee ( 1993, 2001 and 2003 ), winning in 2001 ( Best Actor – Featured Play ) for his role as A. E. Housman in Tom Stoppard's The Invention of Love.

* Arthur Housman – Blackie Joe

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 Jun 1858 in Woodchester, Gloucester ) and Edward Housman ( whose family came from Lancaster ), and was baptized on 24 Apr 1859 at Christ Church, in Catshill.

Housman wrote most of them while living in Highgate, London, before ever visiting that part of Shropshire ( about thirty miles from his home ), which he presented in an idealised pastoral light, as his ' land of lost content '.

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.

Despite the conservative nature of the times, Housman, as distinct from the prudence of his public life, was quite open in his poetry, and especially his A Shropshire Lad, about his deeper sympathies.

Butterworth's death on the Somme in 1916 was considered a great loss to English music ; Ivor Gurney, another most important setter of Housman ( Ludlow and Teme, a work for voice and string quartet, and a song-cycle on Housman works, both of which won the Carnegie Award ) experienced emotional breakdowns which were popularly ( but wrongly ) believed to have originated from shell-shock.

A. E. Housman refers to the ' Greek Lad ', Narcissus, in his poem Look not in my Eyes from A Shropshire Lad set to music by several English composers including George Butterworth.

He studied at Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1930 to 1933, during which time he fell under the influence both of the poet A. E. Housman, then Professor of Latin at the university, and of the writings of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.

Housman, published in five volumes from 1903 to 1930, is considered the authoritative edition, although some may find G. P.

The script by Robert Vansittart and Miles Malleson ( from Laurence Housman ’ s play Victoria Regina ) alternated between the political and the personal lives of the royal couple.

* Authors Dead and Living ; reviews and essays from the New Statesman ( 1926 ; essay on Housman reprinted in the Critical Heritage series, ed.

The title is from the poem " Smooth between sea and land " by Alfred Edward Housman, published in More poems.

Laurence Housman produced a selection from his work which was dedication to the artists daughter Mrs E. C.

For Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee A. E. Housman watched the beacons from summit of Walton Hill.

During his years in London, A. E. Housman completed A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of 63 poems.

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.

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

His songs to poems by A. E. Housman, Thomas Hardy, Christina Rossetti, John Masefield, Rupert Brooke and others, are a valuable addition to English vocal repertoire.

Recently, there has been more interest in and many recordings of Moeran's works, but many of them, such as the songs to poems by A. E. Housman and James Joyce, still remain relatively unknown.

Set in a half-imaginary pastoral Shropshire, " the land of lost content " ( in fact Housman wrote most of the poems before visiting the county ), the poems explore the fleetingness of love and decay of youth in a spare, uncomplicated style which many critics of the time found out-of-date as compared to the exuberance of some Romantic poets.

Both the Edge and the town are the subject of several poems by A. E. Housman in his famous volume A Shropshire Lad, such as: " On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble ..." and " Tis time, I think, by Wenlock town ...".

A. E. Housman wrote as part of his series of poems A Shropshire Lad:

In his paper " The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism ," ( 1921 ) Housman stated: " A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motion of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas.

Among other composers who set Housman songs were John Ireland ( song cycle, Land of Lost Content ), Michael Head ( e. g. ' Ludlow Fair '), Graham Peel ( a famous version of ' In Summertime on Bredon '), Ian Venables ( Songs of Eternity and Sorrow ), and the American Samuel Barber ( e. g. ' With rue my heart is laden ').

Housman is the main character in the 1997 Tom Stoppard play The Invention of Love.

He is a character in the 1997 Tom Stoppard play The Invention of Love, which deals with the life of A. E. Housman and the Oscar Wilde trials.

A notable example of a complete, independent publication is Gow's, A. E. Housman: A Sketch, Together with a List of His Classical Papers ( 1936 ).

It is based on text by Alfred Edward Housman.

There is a statue of Alfred Edward Housman in the high street, which was erected in 1985.

Similarly, Housman advises the speaker that it is wise to occasionally contemplate and encounter the less-than-merry side of life.

Housman, A Shropshire Lad ) — idle hill ... sleepy is a hypallage: it is the narrator, not the hill, who exhibits these features.

His sonnet to Petrarch is included in the collections of English sonnets by Robert Fletcher Housman and Alexander Dyce.

He achieved success in his own day as a composer of choral works such as The Forsaken Merman ( 1895 ), Intimations of Immortality ( which he conducted at Leeds Festival in 1907 ), and The Passion of Christ ( 1914 ) but is now chiefly remembered for his song cycles such as Maud ( after Tennyson, 1898 ) and A Shropshire Lad ( the first known setting of A. E. Housman, 1904 ).

A. E. Housman said that " the business of poetry is to harmonise the sadness of the universe " and Scannell quoted this with approval.

The prison is mentioned in " On Moonlit Heath and Lonesome Bank " which is part of " A Shropshire Lad " by A E Housman.