A Shropshire lad - A. E Housman

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