SOURCE: Stevenson, John W. “The Durability of Housman's Poetry.” Sewanee Review 94, no. 4 (fall 1986): 613-19.

In the following essay, Stevenson observes that, while considered a minor poet, Housman has enjoyed a broad readership and steady reputation. He attributes the enduring appeal to Housman's poetry to his creation of a character (the Shropshire lad) who speaks to the longings of modern man.

Establishing hierarchies for writers can be a shifting game, little different from establishing the canon to study literature. If, for example, you cite Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Wordsworth, and Yeats as major writers, and then list Herrick, Marvell, Christina Rossetti, and A. E. Housman as minor poets, you would probably get little argument from those who determine such canonical categories. But once you have established such hierarchies, what can you say about their reception by the general reader—Dr. Johnson's common reader?

Whom does this general reader continue to...