When I Was One-and-Twenty (For Further Study)

For Further Study

• Graves, Richard Perceval, A. E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet, Charles Shribner’s Sons, 1979.

  This very thorough and readable biography is not inspired, but it is solid and respectable, giving it a certain appeal to Housman’s biggest fans. Graves has all the facts of Housman’s life, but never turns the trick of making the man come alive on the page.

• Hoagwood, Terrance Allan, A. E. Housman Revisited, Twayne Publishers, 1995.

  This book gives a quick, general biography of the poet, and then provides a brief interpretation of the poems in A Shropshire Lad, Last Poems, More Poems, and Additional Poems. This is a very useful source for any student doing a comparison of two or more of Housman’s works.

• Parkenham, Thomas, The Boer War, Random House, 1979.

  A history of the Boer war that provides a good sense of the British mindset at the turn of the century, when Housman’s verse first caught the public’s attention. War historians will love this book, and anyone doing research on the times ought to take a look at it.

• Wilbur, Richard, “Round About a Poem of Housman’s,” in A. E. Housman: A Collection of Critical Essays, edited by Christopher Ricks, Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1968, pp. 85-105.

  Wilbur, a great poet himself, relates his own experience in World War II to Housman’s poem “Epitaph on an Army of Mercenaries,” and quickly dissolves into a twenty-page analysis of the poem.