Alfred Edward Housman

Alfred Edward Housman was born in 1859 and failed his final examinations at Oxford, a failure he experienced as a humiliation. He spent ten years as a clerk in the patent office and published, in his spare time, work in Latin philology remarkable enough to earn him a chair in London and then in Cambridge. There he became an editor of Latin texts known for the ferocity of his criticisms of his colleagues. At Oxford he had fallen in love with Moses Jackson, a science student with whom he shared rooms, who did not share his feelings. He died in 1936.

In the catalogue 1

• PoetryA Shropshire LadAlfred Edward Housman · 1896LiteraturePublic domain