A Shropshire Lad & Last Poems: "I do not choose the right word, I get rid of the wrong one."

Alfred Edward Housman was born on 26 March 1859 in a small village near Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, the eldest of seven children. His mother died when he was 12 and his father remarried. Despite a good formal education where he won prizes for his poetry and a scholarship to Oxford, Houseman failed to get his degree in Classics. Various reasons have been suggested for this; over confidence, a lack of interest in philosophy or the rejection by one of his roommates who was the love of his li...