Scope and Content Note
The papers of Alfred Edward Housman (1859-1936) span the years 1906-1940 and consist largely of drafts of poems, containing numerous corrections and alterations, most of which appeared in A Shropshire Lad(1896), Last Poems (1922), and More Poems (1936). The bulk of the collection is contained in seven volumes or notebooks and consists of rough drafts, later drafts, fair copies, and fragments of the poet’s writings. An introductory volume contains a foreword and indexes to the other notebooks.
An addition to the collection contains photocopies of the published works noted above. The originals of the published volumes, part of a Housman collection at the Lilly Library, Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana, were annotated by John W. Carter in 1939 with readings from the original manuscripts as transcribed from the notebooks. A considerable number of these readings are no longer visible in the manuscripts themselves, and as such, the photocopies represent an important supplement to the notebooks.
Also in the addition is a photocopy of an analysis of the poems in the notebooks, prepared by Carter and accompanied by a photocopy of an index to the original arrangement of the notebooks. Other material in the addition includes a small number of correspondence and miscellaneous items.