![\"Image](\"http:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2014\/05\/Alfred_Edward_Housman.jpeg\")
<\/a> <\/a> <\/a>Figure 1: Alfred Edward Housman[\/caption]\r\n\r\nAlfred Edward Housman was born in 1859 at Fockbury, Worcestershire, near the Shropshire border in England. He was a brilliant student of classics at Oxford, but after falling in love with a heterosexual fellow student named Moses Jackson, his unrequited passion may have played a part in his failing the final examinations in 1881. According to Housman\u2019s biographer,\u00a0 Jackson\u2019s rejection condemned Housman to \u201ca lifetime of unfulfilled loneliness\u201d [Norman Page, \"Housman, Alfred Edward (1859\u20131936),\"<\/a> Oxford Dictionary of National Biography<\/i>, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., Jan. 2011. http:\/\/www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca\/view\/article\/34013, accessed 22 May 2014]\r\n\r\nBecause I liked you better\r\nThan suits a man to say,\r\nIt irked you and I promised\r\nTo throw the thought away. [More Poems<\/i> XXXI]\r\n\r\nAfter Jackson\u2019s marriage in 1888, they rarely met again, and never after Jackson retired to British Columbia, Canada,\u00a0in 1911 to establish a dairy farm in Aldergrove, near Vancouver, where he died of cancer in January 1923.\r\n\r\nHaving failed his final exams, Housman spent the next 11 years as a civil servant in the Patent Office. Nevertheless, he eventually established a reputation as a great classical scholar and went on to publish acclaimed editions of Latin authors such as Ovid, Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan. He published only two slim volumes of poetry during his lifetime, A Shropshire Lad<\/i> (originally titled\u00a0Poems by Terence Hearsay) <\/i>in 1896 and Last Poems<\/i> in 1922. Another slim volume, More Poems<\/i>, was published posthumously by his brother and literary executor Laurence Housman, in 1936, while in A.E.H<\/i>., a memoir published in 1937, his brother included several \u201cAdditional Poems.\u201d Housman\u2019s poetry, like much of Hardy\u2019s poetry, is pervaded by a deep pessimism, unrelieved by religious consolation. Housman strove to emphasize emotion, not intellect, in his verse, and several composers were inspired to give them musical settings.","rendered":"![\"Image](\"https:\/\/opentextbc.ca\/englishliterature\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/27\/2014\/05\/Alfred_Edward_Housman-225x300.jpeg\")
<\/a>Alfred Edward Housman was born in 1859 at Fockbury, Worcestershire, near the Shropshire border in England. He was a brilliant student of classics at Oxford, but after falling in love with a heterosexual fellow student named Moses Jackson, his unrequited passion may have played a part in his failing the final examinations in 1881. According to Housman\u2019s biographer,\u00a0 Jackson\u2019s rejection condemned Housman to \u201ca lifetime of unfulfilled loneliness\u201d [Norman Page, “Housman, Alfred Edward (1859\u20131936),”<\/a> Oxford Dictionary of National Biography<\/i>, Oxford University Press, 2004; online ed., Jan. 2011. http:\/\/www.oxforddnb.com.ezproxy.library.uvic.ca\/view\/article\/34013, accessed 22 May 2014]<\/p>\n Because I liked you better After Jackson\u2019s marriage in 1888, they rarely met again, and never after Jackson retired to British Columbia, Canada,\u00a0in 1911 to establish a dairy farm in Aldergrove, near Vancouver, where he died of cancer in January 1923.<\/p>\n Having failed his final exams, Housman spent the next 11 years as a civil servant in the Patent Office. Nevertheless, he eventually established a reputation as a great classical scholar and went on to publish acclaimed editions of Latin authors such as Ovid, Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan. He published only two slim volumes of poetry during his lifetime, A Shropshire Lad<\/i> (originally titled\u00a0Poems by Terence Hearsay) <\/i>in 1896 and Last Poems<\/i> in 1922. Another slim volume, More Poems<\/i>, was published posthumously by his brother and literary executor Laurence Housman, in 1936, while in A.E.H<\/i>., a memoir published in 1937, his brother included several \u201cAdditional Poems.\u201d Housman\u2019s poetry, like much of Hardy\u2019s poetry, is pervaded by a deep pessimism, unrelieved by religious consolation. Housman strove to emphasize emotion, not intellect, in his verse, and several composers were inspired to give them musical settings.<\/p>\n
\nThan suits a man to say,
\nIt irked you and I promised
\nTo throw the thought away. [More Poems<\/i> XXXI]<\/p>\nMedia Attributions<\/h2>
![Alfred Edward Housman<\/a> © E. O. Hoppe is licensed under a](\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Alfred_Edward_Housman.jpeg)\"){kind=link}