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.

Designed to appeal to the booklover, the Macmillan Collector’s Library is a series of beautiful gift editions of much loved classic titles. Macmillan Collector’s Library are books to love and treasure.

A Shropshire Lad was first published in 1896 at A. E. Housman’s own expense. The collection of lyrical poems became hugely successful following the Second Boer War and World War I, with themes such as nostalgia for one’s home and the patriotic celebration of the life of the solider striking a chord with English readers. This collection contains Housman’s greatest works, demonstrating the lyrical precision and emotional depth of his writing. It includes ‘To an Athlete Dying Young’, a lyrical elegy to a life lost at its prime and ‘When I was One-and-Twenty’, a love poem on the ignorance of youth.