A Shropshire Lad (Penguin Classics: Poetry First Editions) - Tapa blanda

First published at the author's expense in 1896, this series of 63 short poems is one of the unarguably immortal works of English verse. Spare and haunting, 'A Shropshire Lad' is set in a 'land of lost content' in which labourers, lovers and soldiers eke out their ephemeral existences in the shadow of 'heartless, witless nature', whose beauty and perfection they can never hope to live up to. Housman encountered little encouragement, and made the barest profit from the publication. However, as the Great War ground on, public indifference slowly gave way to interest, and the poems achieved a tragic resonance that has never diminished.

Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936), classical scholar and poet, was educated at Bromsgrove and St John's College, Oxford. Whilst at university he formed a passionate attachment to his contemporary Moses Jackson, an important inspiration for his later verse. Intensely private, for unexplained reasons the brilliant Housman failed his Finals and became a clerk in London's Patent Office, before being appointed Professor of Latin in London University and later at Trinity College, Cambridge.