A(lfred) E(dward) Housman
(1859 - 1936) U.K.
Poet and classical scholar
Born in Worchestershire, and educated at Bromsgrove and St John College, Oxford, where he fell in love with Moses Jackson, one of his roommates. In 1896 he published, at his expenses, A Shropshire Lad, a series of deceptively simple nostalgic ballad-like poems, many inspired by his passionate homosexual attachement to his friend Moses, but his love was unrequited. They caught the popular mood during World War I. Housman had a brief relationship with Moses' brother, Adalbert.
In 1982 Housman was appointed professor of Latin at London University, and in 1911 professor of Latin at Cambridge. Housman's poems made coded references to homosexuality. Many of his poems focus on "lads", "friends", and other male figures. Some leave the gender of the beloved unspecified. However, especially in his later verse, Housman is incresingly frank in his depiction of homosexuality.
Praefanda (1931) is a collection of bawdy and "obscene" passages from Latin authors. He made "merry with a string of Venetian gondoliers supplied by his friend (gay French-born British writer) Horatio Brown, and was as well a regular patron of the male brothels in Paris."
To read some of Housman poems, go to our "Homoerotic Poems" book.
|
