A. E. Housman: The Critical Heritage

First published in 1992, A. E. Housman: The Critical Heritage brings together the most important and significant critical response to the poetry of A.E. Housman from the time of his writing to 1951. It contains ninety-four items--articles, reviews, and comments which provide an accurate picture of how Housman the poet was seen during his lifetime and for some years beyond it. The picture which emerges is of a poet not only of popular appeal, but of great literary distinction, who was admired by the majority of reviewers and critics who discussed his work. Among those quoted are J.B. Priestley, Edmund Gosse, Cyril Connolly, T.S. Eliot, George Orwell, Cleanth Brooke, Stephen Spender, John Sparrow, and E.M. Forster.

Philip Gardner, Emeritus Professor of English, Memorial University of Newfoundland, was born in Liverpool in 1936, read English at King’s College, Cambridge and obtained his doctorate at Liverpool University. He is the author of critical studies of Norman Nicholson (1974), Kingsley Amis (1981), and co-author of The God Approached: A Commentary on the Poems of William Empson (1978). He has edited E.M. Forster: The Critical Heritage (1973); E.M. Forster’s Commonplace Book (1985); the Abinger edition of Maurice (1999); and E.M. Forster’s Diaries and Journals (three volumes, 2011). In addition to many scholarly articles, he has published six collections of poetry. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.