Audiobook · read by volunteers
À Shropshire Lad
A. E. Housman (1859–1936)
Read by Alaaious · 2 chapters · 53 min
About the book
Sixty-three poems of country, youth and loss make up A Shropshire Lad, A. E. Housman’s best-known book. The scenes are rural: hills, roads, farms, fairs, soldiers marching away and young men who will not grow old. The tone is nostalgic and often bitter, with a simplicity of language that conceals great craft. Housman published the collection at his own expense in 1896 after several publishers had turned it down, and it sold slowly at first. Later, when many were looking for a poetry that spoke of longing for home and of lives cut short, it found a large audience. This recording is in two parts and lasts under an hour, long enough to hear the whole cycle in a single sitting.
Introduction
Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) was an English poet and classical scholar. A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of sixty-three poems, was first published in 1896 at his own expense, after several publishers had declined it. At first the book sold slowly. During the Second Boer War, however, the nostalgic picture it drew of English rural life and of young soldiers found readers who were moved by it.
The poems are written in a simple style and in regular forms, often in the ballad manner, with short stanzas and strong rhymes. Their subjects are recurring: the countryside of Shropshire, seen from a distance as a place of lost happiness; the brevity of youth; the sadness of early death; love that does not last. Housman’s irony and understatement give these familiar themes their force.
Because the poems are brief, the book can be listened to in sections or as a whole. It is useful to keep in mind that the cycle is arranged with care, so that the poems speak to one another, and that its mood moves between the cheerful and the grim.
The recording is read by a LibriVox volunteer in two parts and lasts around fifty minutes. It is a fine introduction for anyone new to English poetry of the late Victorian period, and a pleasure for those who know it well. Many of the poems have been set to music, and a number of lines have become part of the common stock of quotation, so some listeners will recognise phrases they did not know came from this book.
Public domain
A. E. Housman died in 1936: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text