A. e. housman biography

He arrived there into read classics in the prestigious Honour School of Mods and Greats. After completing the first two years of study, which focus on Latin and Greek, he gained First Class Honours in the Classical Moderations examination. He may not have read enough or studied enough, and he may have been somewhat arrogant, but whatever the reasons he failed the Literae Humaniores Final examination and left Oxford without a degree.

He returned to Bromsgrove and taught for a brief time at his old school. In he returned to Oxford where he was successful in the examinations both for a Pass degree and then entry to the Civil Service. In his first academic paper was published, on the Roman writer Horace. Inon the strength of twenty-five articles that he had contributed to classical journals over the years, Housman was elected Professor of Latin at University College London.

In the year of his Finals, Housman was absorbed in Propertius a poet who wasn't even in the syllabuslazed away his time with Jackson perhapswas upset by his father's decline and feebleness maybe and over-confident possibly. Certainly he failed Greats.

A. e. housman biography: Alfred Edward Housman was an English

For the next eleven years he was a clerk in the Patent Office, at first because Moses Jackson also worked there. They shared lodgings till Jackson sailed to India to become the headmaster of a school he also taught science and even designed the lab furniture. Eighteen months later he came home to marry, but Housman was not asked to the wedding, and in fact knew nothing about it until bride and groom were at sea.

They rarely met again. And then never after Jackson retired to British Columbia where he died of cancer in Meanwhile, Housman had been making a name for himself in the small world of textual criticism through spare time study in the British Museum. Inhe published A Shropshire Lada book of sixty three poems speaking of loss and loneliness, Redcoats, hangings and ale.

Larkin called him 'the poet of unhappiness.

A. e. housman biography: A.E. Housman was an

Orwell confused him with the class war. His poetry is notable for its simplicity, clarity and brevity — yet there is a depth to it as well. Some at UCL said he was scathing yet remote; a man who never troubled to remember the faces of the young women in his classes. At least one student said he never spoke to anybody individually.

A. e. housman biography: Alfred Edward Housman was born

Others gave different accounts, of course. Who knows? Teachers are there to be caricatured. With staff he was more congenial, even genial, and particularly good at dinner. His idea of a good night out was dinner at the Caf— Royal, a music hall, and supper in the Criterion Grille. Now he had money he became bit of a gastronome and oenophile, holidaying in Paris for foodItaly for culture.

If you'd asked Housman the great Socratic question: 'How should we live? Somewhere hidden in the errors of a classical text was the truth, the words the poet had written. To find them again was to right a kind of wrong done against the truth. The Tree of Knowledge will make us wise, he argued, because our natures need knowledge to be fulfilled.

At high table he could dine with seven Nobel Laureates, four presidents of the Royal Society, the philosophers Whitehead, Russell, Wittgenstein, as well as Rutherford who split the atom, and the man who discovered argon. In August the Great War broke out. It's hard to know what to make of Housman's attitude. At the outbreak of war he gave most of his money to the Exchequer.

The essay discussed A. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Moses Jackson. In More Poemshe buries his love for Moses Jackson in the very act of commemorating it, as his feelings of love are not reciprocated and a. e. housman biography be carried unfulfilled to the grave: [ 34 ]. Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say, It irked you, and I promised To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us We parted, stiff and dry; "Good-bye," said you, "forget me. If here, where clover whitens The a. e. housman biography 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.

His poem "Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists? Housman's poetry, especially A Shropshire Ladwas 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. Ivor Gurney was another composer who made renowned settings of Housman's poems.

Towards the end of World War Ihe was working on his cycle Ludlow and Temefor voice and string quartet published in[ 41 ] and went on to compose the eight-song cycle The Western Playland in Charles Wilfred Orr produced 24 Housman settings in songs and song cycles composed from the s into the s. 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. The earliest commemoration of Housman was in the chapel of Trinity College in Cambridge, where there is a memorial brass on the south wall.

Gowwho was also the author of a biographical and bibliographical sketch published immediately following his death. Following in 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 at the age of seventy-six. FromUniversity College London's academic common room was dedicated to his memory as the Housman Room. More followed, placed on his Worcestershire birthplace, his homes and school in Bromsgrove.

The work of local sculptor Kenneth Potts, it was unveiled on 22 March The blue plaques in Worcestershire were set up on the centenary of A Shropshire Lad in As the th anniversary of his birth approached, London University inaugurated its Housman lectures on classical subjects ininitially given every second year then annually after These lectures are listed by date of delivery, with date of first publication given separately if different.

Contents move to sidebar hide. Article Talk. Read Edit View history. Tools Tools. Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. English classicist and poet — For other people with this surname, see Housman surname. Clemence Housman sister Laurence Housman brother. Early life [ edit ].

Later life [ edit ]. Poetry [ edit ]. A Shropshire Lad [ edit ]. Main article: A Shropshire Lad. Later collections [ edit ]. De Amicitia Of Friendship [ edit ]. Musical settings [ edit ]. To his students he appeared as a severe, reticent, remote authority figure. Housman always found his true vocation in classical studies and treated poetry as a secondary activity.

He died two years later in Cambridge. His ashes are buried near St. Laurence's Church, Ludlow, Shropshire. After several publishers had turned it down, he published it at his own expense inmuch to the surprise of his colleagues and students. At first the book sold slowly, but Housman's nostalgic depiction of brave English soldiers struck a chord with English readers and his poems became a lasting success.

World War I would further increase his popularity. Several composers, Arthur Somervell first among them, found inspiration in the seeming folksong-like simplicity of the poems. Housman was surprised by the success of A Shropshire Lad because, like all his poetry, it is imbued with a deep pessimism, with no place for the consolations of religion or hope.

Set in a half-imaginative pastoral Shropshire, "the land of lost content" Housman, in fact, wrote most of the poems before ever visiting the placethe poems explore themes like the fleetingness of love and the decay of youth in a spare, uncomplicated style which many critics of the time found out of date compared with the exuberance of some Romantic poets.

Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespearethe Scottish Border Ballads and Heinrich Heinebut specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry. In the early s, when Moses Jackson was dying in CanadaHousman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems together so that Jackson could read them before his death.

These later poems, most of them written beforeshow a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but also a certain lack of the kind of consistency found in the earlier poems. He published them as his Last Poems because he thought that his poetic inspiration was running out and that he would not publish any more poems in his lifetime—an intuition which would be born out.