Alfred Edward Housman was the greatest English classical scholar of his time and a poet of great ability and mastery within the limitations of his chosen themes and form. A Shropshire Lad, published in 1896 at the author's expense, became one of the most popular and best-selling books of verse in the English language, rivaling FitzGerald's Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, with which it shares a conception of the briefness of youth and life, a disbelief in human immortality or the existence of Gòd;, and a carpe diem philosophy emphasizing the necessity of capitalizing on life's opportunities while one may.

A.E. Housman was the first of the seven children of Sarah Jane and Edward Housman, a solicitor. He was born in Fockbury, Worcestershire, in 1859; the following year, the family moved to Bromsgrove, near Birmingham. From Perry Hall, the Housman family home...