A.E. Housman – författare

HarperCollins is proud to present our range of timeless literary classics. What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? First published in 1896, A.E. Housman’s best-loved collection of poetry is a poignant exploration of love, loss, the inevitable passage of time and the fragility of life. Using elegant melodic simplicity, Housman’s poems arouse profound emotional resonance through their portrayal of an idyllic rural England, evoking a sense of nostalgia and longing for times gone by.A Shropshire Lad became popular with young British soldiers during the First World War and is now widely considered a classic work of English poetry. With lyrical beauty and universal themes, these 63 poems have inspired generations of readers across the world.

A.E. Housman was one of the best-loved poets of his day, and A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems is a collection of poems whose elegant simplicity of form belies their hidden complexities. This Penguin Classics edition is introduced by Nick Laird with revisions by Archie Burnett and an afterword by John Sparrow.'What are those blue remembered hills,What spires, what farms are those?'In this collection, A. E. Housman's poems, including'To an Athlete Dying Young', 'Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now' and 'When I Was One-and-Twenty', conjure up a potent and idyllic rural world imbued with a poignant sense of loss and sadness. Their scope is wide - ranging from religious doubt and doomed love to intense nostalgia for the countryside and patriotic celebration of the life of the soldier - and they are made all the more memorable by their distinctive diction and perfectly modulated rhythm and sound. This volume brings together the works Housman published in his lifetime, A Shropshire Lad (1896) and Last Poems (1922), along with the posthumous selections More Poems and Additional Poems, and three translations of extracts from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides that display his mastery of Classical literature.This edition has been revised by Archie Burnett and includes updated notes on the text and indexes of first lines and titles. In his afterword, John Sparrow discusses Housman's methods of writing and melancholic temperament.Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) usually known as A.E. Housman, was an English poet and classical scholar, now best known for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad.If you enjoyed A Shropshire Lad and Other Poems, you might like John Clare's Selected Poems, also available in Penguin Classics.