A.E. Housman

[close] Alfred Edward Housman (1859 - 1936) was an English classical scholar and poet. He showed early promise as a student at the University of Oxford, but he failed the final examination in literae humaniores and took employment as a patent examiner in London in 1882. In his spare time he engaged in textual criticism of classical Greek and Latin texts and his publications as an independent researcher earned him a high academic reputation and appointment as a professor of Latin at University College London in 1892. In 1911 he was appointed Kennedy Professor of Latin in the University of Cambridge. He is regarded as one of the foremost classicists of his age and one of the greatest classical scholars. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius, and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

In 1896, Housman published A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of poems marked by the author's pessimism and preoccupation with early death, which gradually acquired a wide readership and appealed particularly to a younger audience during World War I. Another collection, entitled Last Poems, appeared in 1922. Housman's poetry became popular for musical settings. Following his death, further poems from his notebooks were published by his brother Laurence.