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A Shropshire Lad
A Shropshire Lad is a collection of 63 poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman, published in 1896. Selling slowly at first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance, and many parodists have satirised Housman's themes and poetic style. Often noted for its homosexual themes, Housman sent a copy of A Shropshire Lad to Oscar Wilde when Wilde was in prison for homosexual acts. After Wilde's release from prison, Housman sent him an autographed copy.
Housman is said originally to have titled his book The Poems of Terence Hearsay, referring to a character there, but changed the title to A Shropshire Lad at the suggestion of a colleague in the British Museum. A friend of his remembered otherwise, however, and claimed that A Shropshire Lad was always Housman's choice of title. He had more than a year to think about it, since most of the poems he chose to include in his collection were written in 1895, while he was living at Byron Cottage in Highgate. The book was published the following year, partly at the author's expense, after it had already been rejected by one publisher.
At first the book sold slowly; the initial printing of 500 copies, some 160 of which were sent to the United States, did not clear until 1898. Sales revived during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), due in part to the prominence of military themes and of dying young. Its popularity increased thereafter, especially during World War I, when the book accompanied many young men into the trenches but it also benefited from the accessibility that Housman encouraged himself. Initially he declined royalty payments, so as to keep the price down, and also encouraged small, cheap pocket (and even waistcoat pocket) editions. By 1911 sales were at an annual average of 13,500 copies, and by its fiftieth anniversary there had been approaching a hundred UK and US editions.
Housman later repeated the claim made in the final poem of the sequence (LXIII) to have had a young male readership in mind. For W. H. Auden and his generation "no other poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent"; and George Orwell remembered that, among his generation at Eton College in the wake of World War I, "these were the poems which I and my contemporaries used to recite to ourselves, over and over, in a kind of ecstasy". They responded to Housman's lament for the transience of love, idealism and youth in what was in essence a half-imaginary pastoral countryside in a county only visited by him after he had begun writing the poems. "I was born in Worcestershire, not Shropshire, where I have never spent much time," he admitted later in a letter to Maurice Pollet dated 5 February 1933. "I had a sentimental feeling for Shropshire because its hills were on our Western horizon." Thus the "blue remembered hills" of his "land of lost content" in Poem XL are mostly a literary construct. Though the names there can be found on the map, their topographical details are admittedly not factual.
Indeed, Housman confessed in his letter to Pollett that "I know Ludlow and Wenlock, but my topographical details – Hughley, Abdon under Clee – are sometimes quite wrong". He did, however, have one source to guide him, echoes from which are to be found in the poems. This was Murray's Handbook for Shropshire, Cheshire and Lancashire (originally published in 1870), in which is to be found the jingle with which poem L opens,
Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.
Shrewsbury is described in the book as "encircled by the Severn on all sides but the North, and locally termed 'the Island'", which Housman condenses to "Islanded in Severn stream" in his poem XXVIII. Murray also mentions that the last fair of the year at Church Stretton is called 'Dead Man's Fair', the event with which "In midnights of November" begins. Written about the same time as the others, this poem was held over until it was incorporated in Last Poems (1922).
In the letter to Pollet already mentioned, Housman pointed out that there was a discontinuity between the Classical scholar who wrote the poems and the "imaginary" Shropshire Lad they portrayed. "No doubt I have been unconsciously influenced by the Greeks and Latins, but [the] chief sources of which I am conscious are Shakespeare's songs, the Scottish Border ballads, and Heine." Yet while it is true that "very little in the book is biographical", he could not entirely escape his literary formation, as he had already speculated in a letter written three decades previously. "I suppose my classical training has been of some use to me in furnishing good models, and making me fastidious, and telling me what to leave out." Nevertheless, some have found a sign in the oversimplification that results, not of Terence's but of Housman's own emotional immaturity.
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A Shropshire Lad
A Shropshire Lad is a collection of 63 poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman, published in 1896. Selling slowly at first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance, and many parodists have satirised Housman's themes and poetic style. Often noted for its homosexual themes, Housman sent a copy of A Shropshire Lad to Oscar Wilde when Wilde was in prison for homosexual acts. After Wilde's release from prison, Housman sent him an autographed copy.
Housman is said originally to have titled his book The Poems of Terence Hearsay, referring to a character there, but changed the title to A Shropshire Lad at the suggestion of a colleague in the British Museum. A friend of his remembered otherwise, however, and claimed that A Shropshire Lad was always Housman's choice of title. He had more than a year to think about it, since most of the poems he chose to include in his collection were written in 1895, while he was living at Byron Cottage in Highgate. The book was published the following year, partly at the author's expense, after it had already been rejected by one publisher.
At first the book sold slowly; the initial printing of 500 copies, some 160 of which were sent to the United States, did not clear until 1898. Sales revived during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), due in part to the prominence of military themes and of dying young. Its popularity increased thereafter, especially during World War I, when the book accompanied many young men into the trenches but it also benefited from the accessibility that Housman encouraged himself. Initially he declined royalty payments, so as to keep the price down, and also encouraged small, cheap pocket (and even waistcoat pocket) editions. By 1911 sales were at an annual average of 13,500 copies, and by its fiftieth anniversary there had been approaching a hundred UK and US editions.
Housman later repeated the claim made in the final poem of the sequence (LXIII) to have had a young male readership in mind. For W. H. Auden and his generation "no other poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent"; and George Orwell remembered that, among his generation at Eton College in the wake of World War I, "these were the poems which I and my contemporaries used to recite to ourselves, over and over, in a kind of ecstasy". They responded to Housman's lament for the transience of love, idealism and youth in what was in essence a half-imaginary pastoral countryside in a county only visited by him after he had begun writing the poems. "I was born in Worcestershire, not Shropshire, where I have never spent much time," he admitted later in a letter to Maurice Pollet dated 5 February 1933. "I had a sentimental feeling for Shropshire because its hills were on our Western horizon." Thus the "blue remembered hills" of his "land of lost content" in Poem XL are mostly a literary construct. Though the names there can be found on the map, their topographical details are admittedly not factual.
Indeed, Housman confessed in his letter to Pollett that "I know Ludlow and Wenlock, but my topographical details – Hughley, Abdon under Clee – are sometimes quite wrong". He did, however, have one source to guide him, echoes from which are to be found in the poems. This was Murray's Handbook for Shropshire, Cheshire and Lancashire (originally published in 1870), in which is to be found the jingle with which poem L opens,
Clunton and Clunbury,
Clungunford and Clun,
Are the quietest places
Under the sun.
Shrewsbury is described in the book as "encircled by the Severn on all sides but the North, and locally termed 'the Island'", which Housman condenses to "Islanded in Severn stream" in his poem XXVIII. Murray also mentions that the last fair of the year at Church Stretton is called 'Dead Man's Fair', the event with which "In midnights of November" begins. Written about the same time as the others, this poem was held over until it was incorporated in Last Poems (1922).
In the letter to Pollet already mentioned, Housman pointed out that there was a discontinuity between the Classical scholar who wrote the poems and the "imaginary" Shropshire Lad they portrayed. "No doubt I have been unconsciously influenced by the Greeks and Latins, but [the] chief sources of which I am conscious are Shakespeare's songs, the Scottish Border ballads, and Heine." Yet while it is true that "very little in the book is biographical", he could not entirely escape his literary formation, as he had already speculated in a letter written three decades previously. "I suppose my classical training has been of some use to me in furnishing good models, and making me fastidious, and telling me what to leave out." Nevertheless, some have found a sign in the oversimplification that results, not of Terence's but of Housman's own emotional immaturity.