A Shropshire Lad

Description

A Shropshire Lad is a book by English poet Alfred Edward Housman, originally published in 1896. It is a collection of sixty-three poems that begins by paying tribute to the Shropshire lads who have died as soldiers in the service of The Queen Empress, as her golden jubilee is celebrated with a bonfire on Clee Hill. The rest of the poems loosely follow the life of the 'Shropshire Lad', from young love to heartbreak, from travel to London, to thoughts of sorrow and death. Almost all of the poems in the book have been set to music at some time by various composers, although they have also lent themselves to parody due to their repeated mannerisms and lilting style - with Housman himself being the first to do this in poem 62, with its humorously voiced criticism of the effect of his writing.

This book has 8,814 words, 66 pages in the PDF version, and was originally published in 1896.

Production notes: This ebook of A Shropshire Lad was published by Global Grey on the 3rd July 2023. The artwork used for the cover is 'The Long Mynd and distant Stokesay Castle' by David Cox Jr..