Housman, A.E.

Housman, A.E.

▪ English scholar and poet
born March 26, 1859, Fockbury, Worcestershire, Eng.
died April 30, 1936, Cambridge
 English scholar and celebrated poet whose lyrics express a Romantic pessimism in a spare, simple style.

      Housman, whose father was a solicitor, was one of seven children. He much preferred his mother; and her death on his 12th birthday was a cruel blow, which is surely one source of the pessimism his poetry expresses. While a student at Oxford, he was further oppressed by his dawning realization of homosexual desires. These came to focus in an intense love for one of his fellow students, an athletic young man who became his friend but who could not reciprocate his love. In turmoil emotionally, Housman failed to pass his final examination at Oxford, although he had been a brilliant scholar.

      From 1882 to 1892 he worked as a clerk in the Patent Office in London. In the evenings he studied Latin texts in the British Museum reading room and developed a consummate gift for correcting errors in them, owing to his mastery of the language and his feeling for the way poets choose their words. Articles he wrote for journals caught the attention of scholars and led to his appointment in 1892 as professor of Latin at University College, London.

      Apparently convinced that he must live without love, Housman became increasingly reclusive and for solace turned to his notebooks, in which he had begun to write the poems that eventually made up A Shropshire Lad (1896). For models he claimed the poems of Heinrich Heine, the songs of William Shakespeare, and the Scottish border ballads. Each provided him with a way of expressing emotion clearly and yet keeping it at a certain distance. For the same purpose, he assumed in his lyrics the unlikely role of farm labourer and set them in Shropshire, a county he had not yet visited when he began to write the first poems. The popularity of A Shropshire Lad grew slowly but so surely that Last Poems (1922) had astonishing success for a book of verse.

      Housman regarded himself principally as a Latinist and avoided the literary world. In 1911 he became professor of Latin at Cambridge, teaching there almost up to his death. His major scholarly effort, to which he devoted more than 30 years, was an annotated edition of Manilius (1903–30), whose poetry he did not like but who gave him ample scope for emendation. Some of the asperity and directness that appears in Housman's lyrics also is found in his scholarship, in which he defended common sense with a sarcastic wit that helped to make him widely feared.

      A lecture, The Name and Nature of Poetry (1933), gives Housman's considered views of the art. His brother Laurence selected the verses for the posthumous volume More Poems (1936). Housman's Letters appeared in 1971.

Additional Reading
An account of his life and work is contained in A.S.F. Gow, A.E. Housman (1936). A later biography is Richard Percival Graves, A.E. Housman: The Scholar Poet (1979). John Bayley, Housman's Poems (1992), offers a reading of the poet's work by a respected literary critic. A.W. Holden and J.R. Birch (eds.), A.E. Housman: A Reassessment (2000), is a collection of revisionary essays.

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Universalium. 2010.

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  • Housman — ist der Familienname folgender Personen: Alfred Edward Housman (1859–1936), englischer Gelehrter und Dichter Glen Housman (* 1971), australischer Schwimmer Laurence Housman (1865–1959), englischer Künstler und Schriftsteller Diese Seite ist …   Deutsch Wikipedia

  • HOUSMAN (A. E.) — HOUSMAN ALFRED EDWARD (1859 1936) Poète et érudit anglais. On discerne chez Housman une sincérité exigeante, scrupuleuse, intensifiée et maîtrisée à la fois par un pessimisme stoïque et par une réserve orgueilleuse, mais aussi les frustrations… …   Encyclopédie Universelle

  • Housman —   [ haʊsmən], Alfred Edward, englischer Lyriker, * Fockbury (bei Worcester) 26. 3. 1859, ✝ Cambridge 30. 4. 1936; war Professor für klassische Literatur, seit 1911 in Cambridge; bekannt durch die nostalgisch einfachen, balladenartigen Gedichte… …   Universal-Lexikon

  • Housman — [hous′mən] A(lfred) E(dward) 1859 1936; Eng. poet & classical scholar …   English World dictionary

  • Housman — noun English poet (1859 1936) • Syn: ↑A. E. Housman, ↑Alfred Edward Housman • Instance Hypernyms: ↑poet …   Useful english dictionary

  • Housman, A(lfred) E(dward) — (26 mar. 1859, Fockbury, Worcestershire, Inglaterra–30 abr. 1936, Cambridge). Estudioso y poeta inglés. Mientras trabajaba de escribiente en la oficina de patentes, estudiaba los textos latinos y escribía los artículos periodísticos que lo… …   Enciclopedia Universal

  • Housman, Laurence — ▪ English artist and writer born July 18, 1865, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, Eng. died Feb. 20, 1959, Glastonbury, Somerset  English artist and writer who reached his widest public with a series of plays about the Victorian era, of which the most… …   Universalium

  • Housman, A(lfred) E(dward) — Hous·man (housʹmən), A(lfred) E(dward). 1859 1936. British poet and scholar whose works appeared in A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922). * * * born March 26, 1859, Fockbury, Worcestershire, Eng. died April 30, 1936, Cambridge English… …   Universalium

  • Housman, Alfred Edward and Laurence — (1859 1959)    • Alfred Edward, the elder brother, 1859 1936    Born in Fockbury, Shropshire, he was educated at Bromsgrove School and St. John s College, Oxford, where he gained first class honors in classics in 1879. He failed to obtain honors… …   British and Irish poets

  • Housman — I. biographical name A(lfred) E(dward) 1859 1936 English classical scholar & poet II. biographical name Laurence 1865 1959 brother of preceding English writer & illustrator …   New Collegiate Dictionary

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