A Shropshire Lad is a collection of 63 poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman, published in 1896. Selling slowly at first, it then rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers. Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance, and many parodists have satirised Housman's themes and poetic style. Often noted for its homosexual themes, Housman sent a copy of A Shropshire Lad to Oscar Wilde when Wilde was in prison for homosexual acts. After Wilde's release from prison, Housman sent him an autographed copy.
A Shropshire rhapsody
Housman is said originally to have titled his book The Poems of Terence Hearsay, referring to a character there, but changed the title to A Shropshire Lad at the suggestion of a colleague in the British Museum. A friend of his remembered otherwise, however, and claimed that A Shropshire Lad was always Housman's choice of title.Firchow 2002, pp. 12–13 He had more than a year to think about it, since most of the poems he chose to include in his collection were written in 1895, while he was living at Byron Cottage in Highgate. The book was published the following year, partly at the author's expense, after it had already been rejected by one publisher.
At first the book sold slowly; the initial printing of 500 copies, some 160 of which were sent to the United States, did not clear until 1898. Sales revived during the Second Boer War (1899–1902), due in part to the prominence of military themes and of dying young. Its popularity increased thereafter, especially during World War I, when the book accompanied many young men into the trenches but it also benefited from the accessibility that Housman encouraged himself. Initially he declined royalty payments, so as to keep the price down, and also encouraged small, cheap pocket (and even waistcoat pocket) editions. By 1911 sales were at an annual average of 13,500 copies, and by its fiftieth anniversary there had been approaching a hundred UK and US editions.Parker 2016, ch. 1
Housman later repeated the claim made in the final poem of the sequence (LXIII) to have had a young male readership in mind.Stokes 2016, p. lii For W. H. Auden and his generation "no other poet seemed so perfectly to express the sensibility of a male adolescent"; and George Orwell remembered that, among his generation at Eton College in the wake of World War I, "these were the poems which I and my contemporaries used to recite to ourselves, over and over, in a kind of ecstasy".Orwell, 1940 They responded to Housman's lament for the transience of love, idealism and youth in what was in essence a half-imaginary pastoral countryside in a county only visited by him after he had begun writing the poems. "I was born in Worcestershire, not Shropshire, where I have never spent much time," he admitted later in a letter to Maurice Pollet dated 5 February 1933. "I had a sentimental feeling for Shropshire because its hills were on our Western horizon." Thus the "blue remembered hills" of his "land of lost content" in Poem XL are mostly a literary construct. Though the names there can be found on the map, their topographical details are admittedly not factual.Stokes 2016, p. liFirchow 2002, pp. 7–9
Indeed, Housman confessed in his letter to Pollett that "I know Ludlow and Wenlock, but my topographical details – Hughley, Abdon under Clee – are sometimes quite wrong". He did, however, have one source to guide him, echoes from which are to be found in the poems. This was Murray's Handbook for Shropshire, Cheshire and Lancashire (originally published in 1870), in which is to be found the jingle with which poem L opens,
Shrewsbury is described in the book as "encircled by the Severn on all sides but the North, and locally termed 'the Island'", which Housman condenses to "Islanded in Severn stream" in his poem XXVIII. Murray also mentions that the last fair of the year at Church Stretton is called 'Dead Man's Fair', the event with which "In midnights of November" begins. Written about the same time as the others, this poem was held over until it was incorporated in Last Poems (1922).Housman Society Newsletter Feb. 22, 2011, p.12
In the letter to Pollet already mentioned, Housman pointed out that there was a discontinuity between the Classical scholar who wrote the poems and the "imaginary" Shropshire Lad they portrayed. "No doubt I have been unconsciously influenced by the Greeks and Latins, but [the] chief sources of which I am conscious are Shakespeare's songs, the Scottish Border ballads, and Heine." Yet while it is true that "very little in the book is biographical", he could not entirely escape his literary formation, as he had already speculated in a letter written three decades previously. "I suppose my classical training has been of some use to me in furnishing good models, and making me fastidious, and telling me what to leave out."The Letters of A. E. Housman, Clarendon Press 2007, pp. 146–47 Nevertheless, some have found a sign in the oversimplification that results, not of Terence's but of Housman's own emotional immaturity.Firchow 2002, pp. 21–23
Thematic summary
A Shropshire Lad contains several repeated themes. It is not a connected narrative; though the "I" of the poems is in two cases named as Terence (VIII, LXII), the "Shropshire Lad" of the title, he is not to be identified with Housman himself. Not all the poems are in the same voice and there are various kinds of dialogue between the speaker and others, including conversations beyond the grave.
The collection begins with an imperial theme by paying tribute to the Shropshire lads who have died as soldiers in the service of The Queen Empress, as her golden jubilee (1887) is celebrated with a beacon bonfire on Clee Hill (I). There is little time for a lad to live and enjoy the spring (II). Death awaits the soldier (III–IV). Maids are not always kind (V–VI) and the farmer also comes to the grave (VII). Some lads murder their brothers and are hanged (VIII–IX). The spring's promise of love and renewal may be false (X). The ghost of a lad dead of grief begs the consolation of a last embrace (XI). Unattainable love leaves the lad helpless and lost (XIII–XVI). The playing of a game of cricket or football consoles a broken heart (XVII). But on this dubious sentiment Edith Sitwell commented acidly, "If he means to say that cricket, and cricket alone, has prevented men from committing suicide, then their continuation on this earth seems hardly worthwhile."Firchow 2002, p. 22
Continuing this theme, the athlete who died young was lucky, for he did not outlive his renown (XIX). The poet exchanges a glance with a marching soldier and wishes him well, thinking they will never cross paths again (XXII). He envies the country lads who die young and do not grow old (XXIII). Seize the day, then, to cultivate friendship (XXIV). A lover may die, and his girl will walk out with another (XXV–XXVII). The hostility of the ancient Saxon and Briton are in his blood, and he owes his life to violence and rape (XXVIII). The storm on Wenlock Edge symbolizes the same turmoil in his soul as the Romans knew at Wroxeter (XXXI). Man is a chance combination of elements – make the most of him while there is time! (XXXII) If he is of no use to those he loves, he will leave, perhaps to enlist as a soldier (XXXIV, XXXV).
One may live in distant exile in London, but without forgetting home and friends (XXXVII, XXXVIII). The wind sighs across England to him from Shropshire, but he will not see the broom flowering gold on Wenlock Edge (XXXVIII–XL). London is full of cold-hearted men who fear and hate one another, but he will make the best of life while he has a living will (XLIII). The suicide is wise, for he prefers to die cleanly rather than harm others and live in shame (XLIV–XLV). These two poems were suggested by a report on the death of a naval cadet in August 1895 who had left behind him a letter mentioning these reasons for taking his own life.Firchow 2002, pp. 21–22 Bring no living branches to the grave of such a one, but only what will never flower again (XLVI). A carpenter's son once died on the gallows so that other lads might live (XLVII). He was happy before he was born, but he will endure life for a while: the cure for all sorrows will come in time (XLVIII). If crowded and noisy London has its troubles, so do quiet Clun and Knighton, and the only cure for any of them is the grave (L).
Though he is in London, his spirit wanders about his home fields (LII). From the grave the suicide's ghost visits the beloved (LIII), a theme apparently derived from a traditional ballad of the unquiet grave type. Those he loved are dead, and other youths eternally re-live his own experiences (LV). Like the lad that becomes a soldier, one can choose to face death young rather than put it off out of cowardice (LVI). Dick is in the graveyard, and Ned is long in jail, when he returns by himself to Ludlow (LVIII). Take your pack and go: death will be a journey into eternal night (LX). It matters not if he sleeps among the suicides, or among those who died well – they were all his friends (LXI). Some mock his melancholy thoughts but he has used them like the poisons sampled by Mithridates and will survive to die old (LXII). Perhaps these poems are not fashionable, but they survive the poet to please other lads like him (LXIII).The source for this synopsis is the work itself. The numerals are those of the poems, in sequence, to which each comment refers.
Interpretations Song settings The strong combination of emotional feeling, lyricism and folk qualities contributed to the popularity of A Shropshire Lad with composers.Wilfrid Mellors, Between Old Worlds and New, Fairleigh Dickinson University, p. 100 All but eight poems in the collection have been set to music, and eleven of them in ten or more settings.Lieder Net Archive Among the latter, "Loveliest of trees, the cherry now" (II) has 47 settingsLNA and "When I Was One-and-Twenty" (XIII) has 44.LNA
Several composers wrote song cycles in which the poems, taken out of their sequence in the collection, contrast with each other or combine in a narrative dialogue. In a few cases they wrote more than one work using this material. The earliest, performed in 1904, less than ten years after the collection's first appearance, was Arthur Somervell's Song Cycle from A Shropshire Lad in which ten were set for baritone and piano.Hold 2002, pp. 91–93 There are six songs in Ralph Vaughan Williams' On Wenlock Edge (1909) in settings which include piano and string quartet; there was also an orchestral version in 1924.Hold 2002, pp. 112–15 Later he returned to Housman again for another cycle, a first version of which was performed in 1927 with solo violin accompaniment, but in this only four were taken from A Shropshire Lad, along with three from Last Poems (1922). The revised work was eventually published in 1954 as Along the Field: 8 Housman songs; in the meantime, "The Soldier" (XXII) was dropped and two more added from Last Poems.Hold 2002, pp. 119–20