author
A. E. (Alfred Edward) Housman
1859–1936
Best known for the much-loved collection A Shropshire Lad, this English poet wrote in a plain, musical style that gives sorrow, youth, and lost time unusual force. He was also one of his age's leading classical scholars, bringing the same precision to Latin texts that he brought to verse.
2 Audiobooks
Last Poems by A. E. Housman
by A. E. (Alfred Edward) Housman
A Shropshire Lad
by A. E. (Alfred Edward) Housman
About the author
Born in Worcestershire in 1859, Alfred Edward Housman became famous as both a poet and a classical scholar. He studied at St John's College, Oxford, later worked as a patent examiner in London, and built his scholarly reputation through brilliant work on Latin texts.
His best-known book, A Shropshire Lad (1896), won generations of readers with its clear language, emotional restraint, and haunting themes of mortality, longing, and the passing of youth. Although deeply associated with Shropshire through these poems, he was not a native of the county; the landscape is as much imagined and remembered as directly lived.
Housman later held major academic posts as Professor of Latin at University College London and then at the University of Cambridge. He died in 1936, leaving behind a body of poetry that remains widely read for its simplicity, sadness, and unforgettable music.