This is the first complete edition of A. E. Housman's poetry, unprecedented in the extent to which it reveals the shaping processes of his poetic thought. The text of the poems published after his death has been corrected from the manuscripts, with all variant readings recorded, and a substantial body of light verse and juvenilia is printed or collected for the first time. The extensive commentary traces the remarkable range of Housman's echoes and allusions--Biblical, Classical, and contemporary--which have never before been explored in such detail, as well as providing information on...

The Letters of A. E. Housman is a scholarly edition of over 2200 letters. (The previous edition, edited by Henry Maas, contained just over 880.) The letters cover the whole range of Housman's daily activities, whether he writes as poet, Professor of Latin, son, brother, uncle, friend, or citizen. Thus they allow the fullest possible revelation of a man whose reserve was legendary. He emerges as a more amiable, more sociable, more generous, more painstaking, and more complex person than has previously been realized. In most cases the source of the text is a manuscript, and this has resulted in...