Books in brief: Housman Country

Housman Country: Into the Heart of England by Peter Parker (Little, Brown, £25)

No publisher cared to take on AE Housman’s slim book of poetry, so in 1896 the author himself paid for the printing of its first edition. After initially poor sales, its reputation soon grew. Within five years A Shropshire Lad was both a critical and popular success and has never been out of print since. In plain, unadorned language, young men’s disappointments and early deaths are depicted, high emotion in an ideal but unconsoling English countryside. Housman was…