The Collected Poems of A.E. Housman

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, University of Kent at Canterbury. Housman's melodic and memorable poems have been popular for over a century.

He writes typically of lost love, of the brevity of happiness, of young soldiers doomed to die.

Admirers have found his work elegant and resonant; detractors have thought much of it mannered and glib.

But Housman speaks with two voices: the smooth texts conceal a dark sub-text.

This tormented and secretive man wrote poems alive with indirect self-disclosure.