A. E. Housman

Alfred Edward Housman was born in 1859 and brought up in the Bromsgrove region of Worcestershire, adjacent to Shropshire. He was educated locally and then studied classics at St John's College, Oxford. Although he was a fine scholar, he failed to gain an Honours degree, and spent some years in the Patent Office in London whilst continuing his studies independently. A series of brilliant academic articles secured him the Professorship of Latin at London University in 1892 and he went on the become Kennedy Professor of Latin at Cambridge and a Fellow of Trinity College. Housman’s first and most famous volume of poetry was A Shropshire Lad (1896), which was followed by several other collections. He died in Cambridge in 1936 and was buried in his beloved Shropshire.