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This Watersgreen House Classics Edition contains the complete volumes of A.E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad and Last Poems together with an introduction by Keith Hale that ties the poems to their historical root: Housman's love for Moses Jackson, the friend with whom Housman shared rooms for one year while studying at Oxford. Though Housman was deeply in love with Jackson, it is doubtful the love was consummated. After Oxford, Housman and Jackson also shared lodgings in London together with Jackson's younger brother Adalbert. It was during this period that Housman and Moses had a falling out, likely due to Housman's unrelenting passion for his friend. Although Moses remained Housman's acquaintance for the rest of his life and Housman never stopped loving him, Moses never gave Housman another opportunity to be close to him. Years later, when Moses was dying in Canada, Housman rushed his volume Last Poems into print so that Moses would have it before passing. Surely, while reading it, Moses recognized himself as the object of every poem of longing and heartbreak...........Watersgreen House is an independent international book publisher with editorial staff in the UK and USA. One of our aims at Watersgreen House is to showcase same-sex affection in works by important gay and bisexual authors in ways which were not possible at the time the books were originally published. We also publish nonfiction, including textbooks, as well as contemporary fiction that is literary, unusual, and provocative. watersgreen.wix.com/watersgreenhouse

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Housman hailed from Ludlow, Shropshire, an idyllic setting then and now, and the melancholy of the Shropshire landscape permeates every line of his verse. He was far luckier than homosexual writers who came before him in that his brother Laurence, who would become his editor and compile further editions of his work after Alfred died, also was homosexual and not inclined to censor his brother. Much of Housman's verse, whether about same-sex longings or other matters, ranges in tone from melancholy to despair. Society's condemnation of homosexuality together with Moses' flat rejection of his love seem to have left him with feelings of self-loathing. While painful for the modern gay reader to confront, Housman's feelings were authentic and true for many homosexuals throughout history. The long history of suicide among persons who are gay is testament to that sad fact, and Housman's poems too at times express suicidal thoughts. However, after Oscar Wilde was tried, convicted, and sentenced to prison for his homosexuality, Housman did not cower. He instead wrote perhaps his most bitter poem, Oh Who is That Young Sinner (from Additional Poems), suggesting Wilde had been imprisoned for something no more important or harmful than the hue of his hair. This poem along with poem XII from Last Poems show a defiance that seems atypical of much of Housman's work until one realizes that to publish any of his volumes during the time period in which he did was in itself an act of extreme defiance and one of the reasons he was so popular among England's youth.

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