Last Poems by A.E. Housman

Last Poems by A.E. Housman. Published by The Richards Press Limited, London. 1938. 32mo up to 5″ tall., 68 pages. Decorative brown leather with gilt titles front and spine; gilt top edge. reading ribbon. Volume is in beautiful condition with inscription dated 1943 to free endpaper. French flap dustjacket has closed tears and chips.

Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad (1896).  In the 1920’s as Housman’s friend and unrequited love Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman selected forty-one of his unpublished poems under the title Last Poems, for Moses to read. Housman’s introduction to the published volume: “I publish these poems, few though they are, because it is not likely that I shall ever be impelled to write much more. I can no longer expect to be revisited by the continuous excitement under which in the early months of 1895 I wrote the greater part of my first book, nor indeed could I well sustain it if it came; and it is best that what I have written should be printed while I am here to see it through the press and control its spelling and punctuation. About a quarter of this matter belongs to the April of the present year, but most of it to dates between 1895 and 1910”.      002545            $40