The Critical Reception of A Shropshire Lad

Abstract

In these times of our own fin de siècle when detective novels such as Colin Dexter’s Daughters of Cain or Andrew Taylor’s An Air That Kills (replete with epigraphs from A Shropshire Lad) remind us of the continuing attention drawn to A. E. Housman’s first book of poems, we might find our literary awareness expanded by a backward glance. The reception of this now long-familiar little book has never been exhaustively evaluated, and thus what follows, itself by no means exhaustive, may recall much to thoroughgoing Housmanians and offer additional or new perspectives for many others.1 What with so many literary periodicals circulating at that time, plus the seventy-odd daily newspapers in London alone during the era when A Shropshire Lad was new literary fare, a team effort and much time might be essential to ferret out all early notices of Housman’s first book of verse. From my assessment of the reviews, I hope to offer sensible conclusions in regard to the impression made by Housman’s poems. My work includes substantial quotation from now century-old periodicals because, even with current methods of access retrieval, along with the panoply of contemporaneous notices reprinted by Philip Gardner, certain commentary might not readily attract investigators.