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  • A Shropshire Lad

  • By: A. E. Housman
  • Narrated by: Samuel West
  • Length: 1 hr and 3 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (77 ratings)
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A Shropshire Lad cover art

A Shropshire Lad

By: A. E. Housman
Narrated by: Samuel West
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Editor reviews

Housman is a high-water mark of British lyric poetry, and this fine production captures perfectly his strong, melodic beat and decisive rhyme, and his wonderful way with words. Samuel West’s cultivated Midlands accent may not be specifically Shropshire, but his voice and reading are true to Housman-who was not, after all, some rough Shropshire lad himself but an Oxford don. His “Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now” and “To an Athlete Dying Young” are beautifully rendered here. West, you feel, reads poetry as it should be read-confidently, with ease and conviction, as if all the world spoke in meter and rhyme.

Summary

Naxos AudioBooks continues its popular The Great Poets series with A Shropshire Lad by A. E. Housman. Published at the author’s own expense in 1896, after rejection from publishers, the collection contains a cycle of 63 poems. Despite exploring themes of lost love, obsession, pessimism, and death, the poems touched English readers and the book became a best seller during the Second Boer War and World War I. The collection, set in a half-imagined pastoral Shropshire, includes the well-known poems "When I Was One-and-Twenty", "To an Athlete Dying Young", and "Loveliest of Trees, the Cherry Now".

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your My Library section along with the audio.

Public Domain (P)2011 Naxos AudioBooks

What listeners say about A Shropshire Lad

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Enjoyable way to pass an hour

I enjoy the poetry of A E Housman who is to Shropshire what Thomas Hardy is to Wessex. Here are 63 poems that Housman self-published in 1896 when in his late thirties. There is melancholy that is poignant but also some jolly poems. It's a pleasant way to spend an hour. Included is one of the nation's favourites: Loveliest of Trees, but there is so much more

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Gutted this will be taken off

I’m gutted this will be taken off Audible shortly, I genuinely love this collection of poems, as a younger listener, I’m drawn into A E Housman and his romantic vision of Shropshire (made all the more poignant when you know he never visited the place), and the touching way the narrator brings these poems to melancholy life.
It’s just that there’s not much of Housman on Audible, and what else is here isn’t as well narrated as this.
This is a really lovely collection to listen to, and I’ll be sad to see the back of it :(

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