Альфред Хаусман — книжные серии

Evocative of ‘the blue remembered hills’ of his youth, Alfred Edward Housman’s A Shropshire Lad is a collection of sixty-three poems of extraordinary beauty and feeling. Set in a semi-imaginary pastoral Shropshire, Housman’s verse considers the helplessness of man, the fragility of life and the terrible effects of war, against the background of an achingly beautiful countryside.

Inspirational for generations of readers, A Shropshire Lad, with its sweeping themes of youth and love, has found its way into the canon of English folksong and has been set to music by composers George Butterworth, John Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams.

This beautiful Macmillan Collector’s Library edition of A. E. Housman's A Shropshire Lad features the superb wood engravings of the Vorticist artist and illustrator Agnes Miller Parker, and is accompanied by an afterword by Dr David Butterfield, Editor of the Housman Society Journal.

...Если воспользоваться набоковским определением "A Shropshire lad": "книга о молодых мужчинах и смерти", то моей целью было написать на ее полях книжку о немолодом мужчине и жизни.
К сожалению, никакой надежды на то, что все потенциальные читатели знают и помнят стихи Хаусмана, нет. Поэтому в левой части каждого разворота помещен его текст, в правой - моя вариация.
Я очень надеюсь, что сама откровенная наглость этой затеи и простодушная беззащитность моих стихов убедят благожелательного читателя в том, что книга вдохновлена не постмодернистским нигилизмом и не манией величия, а любовью к замечательным стихам и уважением к их автору. Когда я уже дописывал это предуведомление, меня посетила страшная догадка: а вдруг я, как и многие другие современные поэты, и раньше, и всю жизнь только и делал, что писал на чужих полях, а сейчас взял да и раскрыл этот секрет Полишинеля? Есть все основания подозревать, что это именно так.

'What passing-bells for these who die as cattle?'

The First World War produced an extraordinary flowering of poetic talent, from poets whose words commemorate the conflict as enduringly as monuments in stone. Their poems have come to express the feelings of a nation about the horrors and aftermath of war. This new anthology provides a definitive record of the achievements of the Great War poets. As well as offering generous selections from the celebrated soldier-poets, including Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon, Rupert Brooke, and Ivor Gurney, it also incorporates less well-known writing by civilian and women poets. Music hall and trench songs provide a further lyrical perspective on the War.

The work of each poet is prefaced with a biographical account that sets the poems in their historical context. In addition, Tim Kendall's introduction charts the history of the war poets' reception and challenges prevailing myths about their progress from idealism to bitterness.

Alfred Edward Housman’s A Shropshire Lad is the wonderful collection of poems that are so evocative of ‘the blue remembered hills’ of his youth. In this half-imaginery ‘land of lost content’ the recurring theme is one of the helplessness of man against an achingly beautiful countryside. It has inspired generations of readers, and has found its way into the canon of English folksong with settings by Butterworth, Ireland and Ralph Vaughan Williams. Agnes Miller Parker (1895–1980) is associated with the group of artists known as Vorticists, active in London in the 1920s. The main body of her work consists of superb wood engravings for book illustration, as here. Illustrated by Agnes Miller Parker. With an afterword by Dr David Butterfield, Editor of The Housman Society Journal