A.E. Housman: Hero of the Hidden Life
A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was an English classical scholar and poet who had an enormous influence on many British poets and musicians.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was both a celebrated poet and the foremost classicist of his day. His poetry was set to music by numerous composers including Arthur Somervell, Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Samuel Barber. Housman's painstaking vocation, to restore classical manuscripts by correcting textual errors, took up virtually the whole of his working life. A seemingly inaccessible, aloof man, he never set out tobe a professional poet, yet poetry poured out of him and became his monument.
His renowned A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems were born of an inner crisis, sparked by a profound but unreciprocated attachment fora fellow undergraduate. To be sexually different in the time of Oscar Wilde was to invite ostracism and disgust. This fact, allied with his secretiveness and penchant for irony, reinforced his reticence on personal matters. Untilnow, he has remained a hidden personality, held in the public mind as prim and grim.
This biography reveals by contrast a man of many facets, one companionable in small groups, generous to a fault, and always on the lookout for humour and fun; a master of English prose; a witty and compelling after-dinner speaker; an occasional writer of nonsense verse; a frequenter of the music hall; an intrepid early traveller by air; and a connoisseur of food and wine. Drawing on Housman's published letters and on 81 significant new finds, Edgar Vincent conjures up a new Housman, created out of his reactions to the events of his life as he experienced them. It weaves together his scholarly life and the biographical elements in his poetry to examine his emotional and sexual needs with dispassion and empathy and to uncover his hidden sensibilities and creative world.

EDGAR VINCENT read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Following Oxford he was commissioned in the Navy, spending most of his time with the Royal Marines. Subsequently he worked for Imperial Chemical Industries for thirty years. He then fulfilled a life-longambition to write his book Nelson: Love & Fame, published by Yale UniversityPress in 2003. The book was shortlisted for the BBC 4 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, was a New York Times Notable Book and was named one ofAtlantic Monthly's Books of the Year.
"1126384580"
A.E. Housman: Hero of the Hidden Life
A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was an English classical scholar and poet who had an enormous influence on many British poets and musicians.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was both a celebrated poet and the foremost classicist of his day. His poetry was set to music by numerous composers including Arthur Somervell, Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Samuel Barber. Housman's painstaking vocation, to restore classical manuscripts by correcting textual errors, took up virtually the whole of his working life. A seemingly inaccessible, aloof man, he never set out tobe a professional poet, yet poetry poured out of him and became his monument.
His renowned A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems were born of an inner crisis, sparked by a profound but unreciprocated attachment fora fellow undergraduate. To be sexually different in the time of Oscar Wilde was to invite ostracism and disgust. This fact, allied with his secretiveness and penchant for irony, reinforced his reticence on personal matters. Untilnow, he has remained a hidden personality, held in the public mind as prim and grim.
This biography reveals by contrast a man of many facets, one companionable in small groups, generous to a fault, and always on the lookout for humour and fun; a master of English prose; a witty and compelling after-dinner speaker; an occasional writer of nonsense verse; a frequenter of the music hall; an intrepid early traveller by air; and a connoisseur of food and wine. Drawing on Housman's published letters and on 81 significant new finds, Edgar Vincent conjures up a new Housman, created out of his reactions to the events of his life as he experienced them. It weaves together his scholarly life and the biographical elements in his poetry to examine his emotional and sexual needs with dispassion and empathy and to uncover his hidden sensibilities and creative world.

EDGAR VINCENT read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Following Oxford he was commissioned in the Navy, spending most of his time with the Royal Marines. Subsequently he worked for Imperial Chemical Industries for thirty years. He then fulfilled a life-longambition to write his book Nelson: Love & Fame, published by Yale UniversityPress in 2003. The book was shortlisted for the BBC 4 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, was a New York Times Notable Book and was named one ofAtlantic Monthly's Books of the Year.
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A.E. Housman: Hero of the Hidden Life

A.E. Housman: Hero of the Hidden Life

by Edgar Vincent
A.E. Housman: Hero of the Hidden Life

A.E. Housman: Hero of the Hidden Life

by Edgar Vincent

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Overview

A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was an English classical scholar and poet who had an enormous influence on many British poets and musicians.

A.E. Housman (1859-1936) was both a celebrated poet and the foremost classicist of his day. His poetry was set to music by numerous composers including Arthur Somervell, Ralph Vaughan Williams, George Butterworth, Ivor Gurney, John Ireland and Samuel Barber. Housman's painstaking vocation, to restore classical manuscripts by correcting textual errors, took up virtually the whole of his working life. A seemingly inaccessible, aloof man, he never set out tobe a professional poet, yet poetry poured out of him and became his monument.
His renowned A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems were born of an inner crisis, sparked by a profound but unreciprocated attachment fora fellow undergraduate. To be sexually different in the time of Oscar Wilde was to invite ostracism and disgust. This fact, allied with his secretiveness and penchant for irony, reinforced his reticence on personal matters. Untilnow, he has remained a hidden personality, held in the public mind as prim and grim.
This biography reveals by contrast a man of many facets, one companionable in small groups, generous to a fault, and always on the lookout for humour and fun; a master of English prose; a witty and compelling after-dinner speaker; an occasional writer of nonsense verse; a frequenter of the music hall; an intrepid early traveller by air; and a connoisseur of food and wine. Drawing on Housman's published letters and on 81 significant new finds, Edgar Vincent conjures up a new Housman, created out of his reactions to the events of his life as he experienced them. It weaves together his scholarly life and the biographical elements in his poetry to examine his emotional and sexual needs with dispassion and empathy and to uncover his hidden sensibilities and creative world.

EDGAR VINCENT read English at St Catherine's College, Oxford. Following Oxford he was commissioned in the Navy, spending most of his time with the Royal Marines. Subsequently he worked for Imperial Chemical Industries for thirty years. He then fulfilled a life-longambition to write his book Nelson: Love & Fame, published by Yale UniversityPress in 2003. The book was shortlisted for the BBC 4 Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, was a New York Times Notable Book and was named one ofAtlantic Monthly's Books of the Year.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781783272419
Publisher: BOYDELL & BREWER INC
Publication date: 02/16/2018
Pages: 524
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

Table of Contents

Illustrations xi

Credits xiii

Acknowledgements xv

Preface xix

Part I Childhood 1

Firstborn

Loses his mother on his twelfth birthday

The Wises and Sophie Becker

A second mother: The Mater

The boys are circumcised

Father's sharp practice

Bromsgrove School and Headmaster Millington

Genetic inheritance

Part II Oxford 23

The road to academic failure

Falling in love with textual criticism

Housman, Jackson and Pollard

Part III The Patent Office 36

Failure in Greats

The Patent Office via the valley of death and sweat

Housman, Moses Jackson and Adalbert Jackson at 82 Talbot Road

Building a reputation as a classical scholar

'The great and real trouble of my early manhood'

Renewed impetus in scholarship

His morality as a scholar

Part IV Re-entry to the academic life 60

Houseman applies for the post of Professor of Latin at University College London

June 1892: Elected Professor of Latin

A letter from Maycock

Introductory Lecture at University College

Possessed by the muse: The poetic eruption of 1894-95

Genesis of Housman's poetry

The trial of Oscar Wilde

A disturbing academic controversy

Sibling rivalry with Laurence

Distress and depression

Poetry and Autobiography

Poems about love and lovers and soldiers

Poet of the countryside

Philosophy of life

Housman, the comic versifier

A Shropshire Lad: Critical reception and aftermath

Part V Pastures new 105

1897: The call of the Continent

Housman's impact on University College

Support for Moses Jackson

Helping to manage a crisis

30 October 1901: Brother Herbert killed in the Boer War

Laurence's literary spoof

Recollections and reflections of Housman at University College

Jeannie Fletcher

1903: Volume I of Manilius dedicated to Moses Jackson

Housman's slashing invective

Part VI Who am I? 128

Morality and sexual difference then and now

Housman's reading and research on sexual difference

Searching for reflections of Housman

Venetian connections

Andrea, my gondolier

Horatio Brown and Walter Ashburner

Enter Grant Richards

Enter William Rothenstein

Part VII Paradoxical Housman 159

The return of Housman's muse

Housman and his stepmother

Love for the music hall

Rejection of academic recognition

Dislike of writing to order

Richards in crisis

Enter Witter Bynner

2 May 1905: Brother Robert Housman dies

Anthologists, composers, illustrators and American publishers

12 November 1907: The Mater dies, Housman moves to Pinner

Connections with other classicists

Laurence's theatrical contretemps and mistaken identities

Part VIII Cambridge - The glittering prize 178

Elected Professor of Latin at Cambridge and fellow of Trinity College

Moss Jackson moves to Canada: Housman's generosity

Housman moves to Trinity: Farewell to University College, London

The Cambridge Inaugural Lecture

Manilius II nears completion: Paris calls

Re-enter Herbert Foxwell

Part IX The Great War 1914-1918 211

Propaganda and poets

Armageddon: Nephew killed in action

Excape to the Riviera

A beach holiday with the Richards

Enter Percy Withers

Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries

Scholarly output unabated: Manilius III published in 1916

Three Jackson sons at the Front

Housman's war

Housman's neighbour Wittgenstein

Declines to be considered for Public Orator at the University

Part X After the war 246

Destination Paris, Brive and the Limousin

Manilius IV: Bring difficult

Rent-a-pen

1920: Housman takes to the air

Richards again in financial difficulties

Part XI Last Poems A Requiem for Moses Jackson 263

Last letters

14 January 1923: Moses Jackson dies

Last Poems: Critical reception

Liftinhg the veil

A member of The Family

Turns down the Clark Lectureship

16 March 1925: Arthur Platt dies

16 March 1926: Housman's Lucan published

Richards again in crisis

Dealing with tricksters

Burgundian odyssey with Richards

Thomas Hardy's funeral

Refuses an honorary doctorate from his alma mater

Encore Paris

Kate inherits

Part XII Last Things 323

Housman refuses the Order of Merit

26 March 1929: Housman's Seventieth birthday

Ever generous Housman

Flying again

Manilius completed

Praefanda

More slashing invective

3 May 1931: Sophie Becker dies

The crisis in the economy

Part XIII Paris 1932 356

Paris and forbidden pleasures?

1 December 1932: Brother Basil Housman dies

A Christmas present from Rosa Jackson

Godfather Housman

Part XIV Academic apotheosis and swansong 379

January 1933: The Maurice Pollet questionnaire

The Leslie Stephen Lecture

Part XV Last flights to France 395

T.S. Eliot speaks

The Evelyn Nursing Home

Escape to France

Enter Ezra Pound

Intimations of mortality

Eduard Fraenkel

Last flight to France

Back in the nursing home

Christmas in the nursing home

Housman faces death

30 April 1936: Housman dies

Posthunous publications published by Laurence Housman 434

Epilogue 441

References 443

Bibliography 466

Index 473

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