A. E. Housman · 1896
A Shropshire Lad (1896) is a collection of sixty-three poems by A. E. Housman. In short, musical lyrics, it evokes young men of the English countryside, their loves, their soldiering and their early deaths. It became one of the most popular books of English poetry.
The poems
The poems are spoken mostly by 'Terence', a young man of Shropshire, or by the poet himself. Their themes are the brevity of youth, unhappy love, the coming of death and the beauty of a landscape seen with nostalgia.
Housman used simple ballad metres and plain words, influenced by the English ballad, the songs of Heine and the Latin poets.
Publication
Housman wrote most of the poems in an intense period in 1895. When the publisher Macmillan turned the book down, he paid for its publication by Kegan Paul in 1896; the first edition of five hundred copies sold slowly.
Sales grew after a second edition in 1898, and especially during the Boer War and the First World War, when the book was carried by soldiers.
Music
The poems have been set to music more than almost any others in English. George Butterworth's settings (1911) and Ralph Vaughan Williams's song cycle On Wenlock Edge (1909) are among the best known.
Butterworth himself was killed on the Somme in 1916, a fate that seemed to echo the poems.
Anecdotes
The original title
Housman first called the collection Poems by Terence Hearsay. A friend, the scholar A. W. Pollard, suggested the title A Shropshire Lad.
No royalties
Housman is said to have refused royalties for A Shropshire Lad for years, asking that the price be kept low so that young people could afford it.
Frequently asked questions
Who is the Shropshire lad?
A figure called Terence, a young countryman who speaks many of the poems, though Housman himself was from Worcestershire.
When was A Shropshire Lad published?
In 1896, at Housman's own expense.
Which composers set it to music?
George Butterworth, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Ivor Gurney, Arthur Somervell and many others.