Housman Country: Into the Heart of England
By Peter Parker
4/5
()
About this ebook
A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice and Nominated for the 2017 PEN/Bograd Weld Prize for Biography
A captivating exploration of A. E. Housman and the influence of his particular brand of Englishness
A. E. Housman’s A Shropshire Lad made little impression when it was first published in 1896 but has since become one of the best-loved volumes of poetry in the English language. Its evocation of the English coun - tryside, thwarted love, and a yearning for things lost is as potent today as it was more than a century ago, and the book has never been out of print.
In Housman Country, Peter Parker explores the lives of A. E. Housman and his most famous book, and in doing so shows how A Shropshire Lad has permeated English life and culture since its publication. The poems were taken to war by soldiers who wanted to carry England in their pockets, were adapted by composers trying to create a new kind of English music, and have influ - enced poetry, fiction, music, and drama right up to the present day. Everyone has a personal “land of lost content” with “blue remembered hills,” and Housman has been a tangible and far-reaching presence in a startling range of work, from the war poets and Ralph Vaughan Williams to Inspector Morse and Morrissey.
Housman Country is a vivid exploration of England and Englishness, in which Parker maps out terrain that is as historical and emotional as it is topographical.
Peter Parker
Peter Parker was born in Herefordshire and educated in the Malverns, Dorset and London. He is the author of ‘The Old Lie: The Great War and the Public-School Ethos’ (1987) and biographies of J.R. Ackerley (1989) and Christopher Isherwood (2004). He writes about books and gardening for a wide variety of newspapers and magazines and lives in London's East End.
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Reviews for Housman Country
10 ratings2 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A beautiful extended meditation on Housman’s poetry, its meaning especially to the Great War generation that followed the publication of “A Shropshire Lad” and its continuing impact. It is enjoyably detailed, exploring Housman’s poetry through his life and though landscape that the poems use (although this is often revealed to be the generic English landscape, rather than Shropshire). There is a chapter on the influence of the poems on English music, which was too detailed for me, and a final chapter on the poetry in recent culture, which felt as if it was overstating the case. However there are very interesting chapters on the appropriation of the poetry during the First World War, as expected, but still in the Second World War, and in the discovery of England as a leisure destination between the wars.The author states that ‘Housman Country’ is very much more than a tourist-board notion, and in this book I go in search of a landscape that is not merely geographical, but also literary, musical, emotional, even, in the broadest sense, spiritual. The English landscape defines English poetry (from William Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’ to Edward Thomas’s ‘Adlestrop’), English painting (Constable and Turner) and English music (Elgar and Vaughan Williams). The language can at times be overwrought, such as:In fact, at heart Housman was a romantic – though a romantic of a peculiarly doom-laden and tight-lipped English variety: because one is lapidary, it does not mean one has a heart of stone. The cynicism people detected in Housman’s work was merely the obverse of the romantic medal, for what are cynics if not disappointed romantics? However, I enjoyed the book immensely, skimming those parts that were too detailed for me, appreciating the frequent quotations, not just from Housman’s poetry, but his prose and that of those who were touched by his poetry. I gained a refreshed and deeper impression of the poetry.One quote from the poetry:Clay lies still, but blood’s a rover;Breath’s a ware that will not keep. Up, lad: when the journey’s over There’ll be time enough to sleep.Go read the poetry, read this book to deepen your understanding of its context and read the poetry.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I can't add more on the content from the previous review, but it's worth mentioning that the book is exceptionally beautiful, with a cover and endpapers featuring reproductions of Agnes Miller Parker's illustrations to A Shropshire Lad. I can't help wondering if the author is any relation?