<Tr> <Th> Followed by </Th> <Td> Last Poems </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Th> Text </Th> <Td> A Shropshire Lad at Wikisource </Td> </Tr> <P> A Shropshire Lad is a collection of sixty - three poems by the English poet Alfred Edward Housman, published in 1896 . After a slow beginning, it rapidly grew in popularity, particularly among young readers . Composers began setting the poems to music less than ten years after their first appearance . Many parodies have also been written that satirise Housman's themes and stylistic characteristics . </P> <P> Housman is said originally to have titled his book The Poems of Terence Hearsay, referring to a character there, but changed the title to A Shropshire Lad at the suggestion of a colleague in the British Museum . A friend of his remembered otherwise, however, and claimed that Housman's choice of title was always the latter . He had more than a year to think about it, since most of the poems he chose to include in his collection were written in 1895, while he was living at Byron Cottage in Highgate . The book was published the following year, partly at the author's expense, after it had already been rejected by one publisher . </P>

Early 20 th century poet who wrote a shropshire lad