Bust of the Roman poet Lucan, Córdoba, Spain.

Marcus Annaeus Lucanus (November 3, 39 AD – April 30, 65 AD), better known in English as Lucan, was a Roman poet, born in Corduba (modern-day Córdoba), in the Hispania Baetica. Despite his short life, he is regarded as one of the outstanding figures of the Imperial Latin period. His youth and speed of composition set him apart from other poets.

Life[link]

Three brief ancient lives, the earliest attributed to Suetonius, another to an otherwise unknown Vacca, and the third anonymous and undated, along with references in Martial, Cassius Dio, Tacitus's Annals, and one of Statius's Silvae, allow for the reconstruction of a modest biography. Lucan was the grandson of Seneca the Elder and grew up under the tutelage of his uncle Seneca the Younger. Born into a wealthy family, he studied rhetoric at Athens and was probably provided with a philosophical and Stoic education by his uncle.^[1]

Engraved Title Page of a French edition of Lucan's Pharsalia, 1657

He found success under Nero, became one of the emperor's close friends and was rewarded with a quaestorship in advance of the legal age. In 60 AD, he won a prize for extemporizing Orpheus and Laudes Neronis at the quinquennial Neronia, and was again rewarded when the emperor appointed him to the augurate. During this time he circulated the first three books of his epic poem, Pharsalia (labelled De Bello civili in the manuscripts), which told the story of the civil war between Julius Caesar and Pompey.

At some point, a feud began between Nero and Lucan. Two very different accounts of the events have survived that both trivialize the feud. According to Tacitus, Nero became jealous of Lucan and forbade him to publish his poems.^[2] According to Suetonius, Nero lost interest in Lucan and Lucan responded by writing insulting poems about Nero that Nero continued to ignore.^[3]

Other works, though, point to a more serious basis to the feud. Works by the grammarian Vacca and the poet Statius may support the claim that Lucan wrote insulting poems about Nero. Vacca mentions that one of Lucan's works was entitled De Incendio Urbis (On the Burning of the City).^[4] Statius' ode to Lucan mentions that Lucan described the "unspeakable flames of the criminal tyrant roamed the heights of Remus."^[5] Additionally, the later books of Pharsalia are anti-Imperial and pro-Republic. This criticism of Nero and office of the Emperor may have been the true cause of the ban.

Lucan later joined the 65 AD conspiracy of Gaius Calpurnius Piso against Nero. His treason discovered, he was obliged to commit suicide by opening a vein at the age of 25, but not before incriminating his mother, among others, in hopes of a pardon. According to Tacitus, as Lucan bled to death, "(he) recalled some poetry he had composed in which he had told the story of a wounded soldier dying a similar kind of death, and he recited the very lines. These were his last words."^[6]

His father was involved in the proscription but his mother escaped. Statius' poem about Lucan was addressed to his widow Polla Argentaria upon the occasion of his birthday during the reign of Domitian (Silvae, ii.7, the Genethliacon Lucani).

Works[link]

According to Vacca and Statius, Lucan's works included:

Surviving work:

• Bellum Civile (Civil War), on the wars between Julius Caesar and Pompey Magnus

Often attributed to him (but to others as well):

• Laus Pisonis (Praise of Piso), a panegyric of a member of the Piso family

Lost works:

• Catachthonion
• Iliacon from the Trojan cycle
• Epigrammata
• Adlocutio ad Pollam
• Silvae
• Saturnalia
• Medea
• Salticae Fabulae
• Laudes Neronis, a praise of Nero
• Orpheus
• Prosa oratio in Octavium Sagittam
• Epistulae ex Campania
• De Incendio Urbis, on the Roman fire of 64, perhaps accusing Nero of arson

Selected modern studies[link]

• Ahl, Frederick M. Lucan: An Introduction. Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 39. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Pr., 1976.
• Bartsch, Shadi. Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan's Civil War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Pr., 1997.
• Dewar, Michael. "Laying It On with a Trowel: The Proem to Lucan and Related Texts." Classical Quarterly 44 (1994), 199–211.
• Fantham, Elaine. "Caesar and the Mutiny: Lucan's Reshaping of the Historical Tradition in De Bello Civili 5.237–373." Classical Philology 80 (1985), 119–31.
• ———. "Lucan's Medusa Excursus: Its Design and Purpose." Materiali e discussioni 29 (1992), 95–119.
• Hays, Gregory. "'Important If True': Lucan's Orpheus and Aethicus Ister," Notes and Queries, 57,2 (2010), 196-199.
• Henderson, John G. W. "Lucan: The Word at War." Ramus 16 (1987), 122–64.
• Johnson, Walter R. Momentary Monsters: Lucan and His Heroes. Cornell Studies in Classical Philology 47. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Pr., 1987.
• Lapidge, M. "Lucan's Imagery of Cosmic Dissolution." Hermes 107 (1979), 344–70.
• Leigh, Matthew. Lucan: Spectacle and Engagement. New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1997.
• Marti, Berthe. "The Meaning of the Pharsalia." American Journal of Philology 66 (1945), 352–76.
• Martindale, Charles A. "The Politician Lucan." Greece and Rome 31 (1984), 64–79.
• Masters, Jamie. Poetry and Civil War in Lucan's 'Bellum Civile'. Cambridge Classical Studies. New York: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1992.
• ———. "Deceiving the Reader: The Political Mission of Lucan's Bellum Civile." Reflections of Nero: Culture, History, and Representation, ed. Jás Elsner and Jamie Masters. Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Pr., 1994. 151–77.
• Morford, M. P. O. The Poet Lucan. New York: Oxford Univ. Pr., 1967.
• O'Gorman, Ellen. "Shifting Ground: Lucan, Tacitus, and the Landscape of Civil War." Hermathena 159 (1995), 117–31.
• Rossi, Andreola. "Remapping the Past: Caesar's Tale of Troy (Lucan BC 9.964–999)." Phoenix 55 (2001), 313–26.
• Sklenar, Robert John. The Taste for Nothingness: A Study of "Virtus" and Related Themes in Lucan's Bellum Civile. Ann Arbor: Univ. of Mich. Pr., 2003.
• Thomas, Richard F. "The Stoic Landscape of Lucan 9." Lands and Peoples in Roman Poetry: The Ethnographic Tradition. New York: Cambridge Univ. Pr., 1982. 108–23.

Notes[link]

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Marcus Annaeus Lucanus

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Marcus Annaeus Lucanus

• Works by Lucan at Project Gutenberg
• Marcus Annaeus Lucanus: text, concordances and frequency list
• Text of Lucan at the Latin Library

Alfred Edward Housman
A. E. Housman photographed by E.O. Hoppe.
Born	26 March 1859 (1859-03-26) Bromsgrove, Worcestershire
Died	30 April 1936 (1936-05-01) (aged 77) Cambridge
Pen name	A. E. Housman
Occupation	Classicist, Poet
Nationality	British
Alma mater	St John's College, Oxford
Genres	Lyric Poetry

Alfred Edward Housman ( /ˈhaʊsmən/; 26 March 1859 – 30 April 1936), usually known as A. E. Housman, was an English classical scholar and poet, best known to the general public for his cycle of poems A Shropshire Lad. Lyrical and almost epigrammatic in form, the poems were mostly written before 1900. Their wistful evocation of doomed youth in the English countryside, in spare language and distinctive imagery, appealed strongly to late Victorian and Edwardian taste, and to many early 20th century English composers (beginning with Arthur Somervell) both before and after the First World War. Through its song-setting the poetry became closely associated with that era, and with Shropshire itself.

Housman was counted one of the foremost classicists of his age, and has been ranked as one of the greatest scholars of all time.^{[1] [2]} He established his reputation publishing as a private scholar and, on the strength and quality of his work, was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London and later, at Cambridge. His editions of Juvenal, Manilius and Lucan are still considered authoritative.

Life[link]

The eldest of seven children, Housman was born at Valley House in Fockbury, a hamlet on the outskirts of Bromsgrove in Worcestershire, to Sarah Jane (née Williams, married 17 Jun 1858 in Woodchester, Gloucester)^[3] and Edward Housman, and was baptized on 24 Apr 1859 at Christ Church, in Catshill.^[4][5][6] His mother died on his 12th birthday, and his father, a country solicitor, later remarried, to an elder cousin, Lucy, in 1873. Housman's brother Laurence Housman and sister Clemence Housman also became writers.

Housman was educated first at King Edward's School, Birmingham, then Bromsgrove School, where he acquired a strong academic grounding and won prizes for his poetry.^[6] In 1877, he won an open scholarship to St John's College, Oxford, where he studied classics.^[6] Although by nature rather withdrawn, Housman formed strong friendships with two roommates, Moses Jackson and A. W. Pollard. Jackson became the great love of Housman's life, though the latter's feelings were not reciprocated, as Jackson was heterosexual.^[7] Housman obtained a first in classical Moderations in 1879, but his immersion in textual analysis, particularly with Propertius, led him to neglect ancient history and philosophy, which formed part of the Greats curriculum, and thus he failed to obtain a degree.^[6] Though some explain Housman's unexpected failure in his final exams as a result of Jackson's rejection,^[8] most biographers adduce a variety of reasons, indifference to philosophy, overconfidence in his praeternatural gifts, a contempt for inexact learning, and enjoyment of idling away his time with Jackson, conjoined with news of his father's desperate illness as the more immediate and germane causes.^[9][10][11] The failure left him with a deep sense of humiliation, and a determination to vindicate his genius.

After Oxford, Jackson got a job as a clerk in the Patent Office in London and arranged a job there for Housman as well.^[6] They shared a flat with Jackson's brother Adalbert until 1885 when Housman moved to lodgings of his own. Moses Jackson moved to India in 1887. When Jackson returned briefly to England in 1889 to marry, Housman not only was not invited to the wedding but knew nothing about it until the couple had left the country. Adalbert Jackson died in 1892. Housman continued pursuing classical studies independently and published scholarly articles on such authors as Horace, Propertius, Ovid, Aeschylus, Euripides and Sophocles.^[6] He gradually acquired such a high reputation that in 1892 he was offered the professorship of Latin at University College London, which he accepted.^[6] Many years later, the UCL academic staff common room was dedicated to his memory as the Housman Room.

The pleasures Housman enjoyed included gastronomy, flying in aeroplanes, and frequent visits to France, where he read "books which were banned in Britain as pornographic".^[12] A fellow don described him as being "descended from a long line of maiden aunts".^[13]

Housman's grave at St. Laurence's Church in Ludlow. The cherry tree, on the right, was planted in his memory (see A Shropshire Lad, II).

Although Housman's early work and his sphere of responsibilities as professor included both Latin and Greek, he began to focus his energy on Latin poetry. When asked later why he had stopped writing about Greek poetry, he responded, "I found that I could not attain to excellence in both."^[14] In 1911, he took the Kennedy Professorship of Latin at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he remained for the rest of his life. Classics Professor G. P. Goold at University College, wrote of Housman's scholarly accomplishments: "The legacy of Housman's scholarship is a thing of permanent value; and that value consists less in obvious results, the establishment of general propositions about Latin and the removal of scribal mistakes, than in the shining example he provides of a wonderful mind at work.... He was and may remain the last great textual critic." ^[2] During 1903–1930, he published his critical edition of Manilius's Astronomicon in five volumes. He also edited works of Juvenal (1905) and Lucan (1926). Many colleagues were unnerved by his scathing critical attacks on those whom he found guilty of shoddy scholarship.^[6] In his paper "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism," (1921) Housman stated: "A textual critic engaged upon his business is not at all like Newton investigating the motion of the planets: he is much more like a dog hunting for fleas." He declared many of his contemporary scholars to be stupid, lazy, vain, or all three, proclaiming: "Knowledge is good, method is good, but one thing beyond all others is necessary; and that is to have a head, not a pumpkin, on your shoulders, and brains, not pudding, in your head." ^[2][15] His younger colleague A. S. F. Gow quotes examples of these attacks, noting that they "were often savage in the extreme."^[16] Gow also relates how Housman intimidated his students, sometimes reducing them to tears. According to Gow, Housman could never remember his students' names, maintaining that "had he burdened his memory by the distinction between Miss Jones and Miss Robinson, he might have forgotten that between the second and fourth declension." One notable pupil was Enoch Powell.^[17] Housman found his true vocation in classical studies and treated poetry as a secondary activity. He did not speak about his poetry in public until 1933 when he gave a lecture, "The Name and Nature of Poetry", in which he argued that poetry should appeal to emotions rather than to the intellect.

Housman died aged 77, in Cambridge. His ashes are buried near St Laurence's Church, Ludlow, Shropshire.^[6] The University of Worcester has acknowledged Housman's local connection by naming a new building after him.

Poetry[link]

[edit] A Shropshire Lad

During his years in London, A. E. Housman completed A Shropshire Lad, a cycle of 63 poems.^[6] After several publishers had turned it down, he published it at his own expense in 1896. The volume surprised both his colleagues and students.^[6] At first selling slowly, it rapidly became a lasting success, and its appeal to English musicians had helped to make it widely known before World War I, when its themes struck a powerful chord with English readers.^[6] A Shropshire Lad has been in print continuously since May 1896.^[13]

The poems are pervaded by deep pessimism and preoccupation with death, without religious consolation.^[6] Housman wrote most of them while living in Highgate, London, before ever visiting that part of Shropshire (about thirty miles from his home), which he presented in an idealised pastoral light, as his 'land of lost content'.^[19] Housman himself acknowledged the influence of the songs of William Shakespeare, the Scottish Border ballads and Heinrich Heine, but specifically denied any influence of Greek and Latin classics in his poetry.

Later collections[link]

In the early 1920s, when Moses Jackson was dying in Canada, Housman wanted to assemble his best unpublished poems so that Jackson could read them before his death.^[6] These later poems, mostly written before 1910, show a greater variety of subject and form than those in A Shropshire Lad but lack the consistency of his previously published work. He published them as Last Poems (1922) because he felt his inspiration was exhausted and that he should not publish more in his lifetime. This proved true. After his death Housman's brother, Laurence, published further poems which appeared in More Poems (1936) and Collected Poems (1939). Housman also wrote a parodic Fragment of a Greek Tragedy, in English, and humorous poems published posthumously under the title Unkind to Unicorns.

John Sparrow found statements in a letter written late in Housman's life which describe how his poems came into existence:

Poetry was for him ...'a morbid secretion', as the pearl is for the oyster. The desire, or the need, did not come upon him often, and it came usually when he was feeling ill or depressed; then whole lines and stanzas would present themselves to him without any effort, or any consciousness of composition on his part. Sometimes they wanted a little alteration, sometimes none; sometimes the lines needed in order to make a complete poem would come later, spontaneously or with 'a little coaxing'; sometimes he had to sit down and finish the poem with his head. That .... was a long and laborious process.^[20]

Sparrow himself adds, "How difficult it is to achieve a satisfactory analysis may be judged by considering the last poem in A Shropshire Lad. Of its four stanzas, Housman tells us that two were 'given' him ready made; one was coaxed forth from his subconsciousness an hour or two later; the remaining one took months of conscious composition. No one can tell for certain which was which."^[20]

[edit] De Amicitia (about friendship)

In 1942 Laurence Housman also deposited an essay entitled "A. E. Housman's 'De Amicitia'" in the British Library, with the proviso that it was not to be published for 25 years. The essay discussed A. E. Housman's homosexuality and his love for Jackson.^[21] Despite the conservative nature of the times, Housman, as distinct from the prudence of his public life, was quite open in his poetry, and especially his A Shropshire Lad, about his deeper sympathies. Poem 30 of that sequence, for instance, speaks of how "Fear contended with desire": "Others, I am not the first / have willed more mischief than they durst". In More Poems, he buries his love for Moses Jackson in the very act of commemorating it, as his feelings of love break his friendship, and must be carried silently to the grave:.^[22]

<poem> Because I liked you better Than suits a man to say It irked you, and I promised To throw the thought away.

To put the world between us We parted, stiff and dry; Goodbye, said you, forget me. I will, no fear, said I

If here, where clover whitens The dead man's knoll, you pass, And no tall flower to meet you Starts in the trefoiled grass,

Halt by the headstone naming The heart no longer stirred, And say the lad that loved you Was one that kept his word.^[23] </poem>

His poem, "Oh who is that young sinner with the handcuffs on his wrists?", written after the trial of Oscar Wilde, addressed more general social injustice towards homosexuality.^[24] In the poem the prisoner is suffering "for the colour of his hair", a natural, given attribute which, in a clearly coded reference to homosexuality, is reviled as "nameless and abominable" (recalling the legal phrase peccatum horribile, inter christianos non nominandum, "the horrible sin, not to be named amongst Christians").

Housman in other art forms[link]

Music and art song[link]

Housman's poetry, especially A Shropshire Lad, provided texts for a significant number of British, and in particular English, composers in the first half of the 20th century.^[2] The national, pastoral and traditional elements of his style resonated with similar trends in English music. The first was probably the cycle A Shropshire Lad set by Arthur Somervell in 1904, who had begun to develop the concept of the English song-cycle in his version of Tennyson's Maud a little previously. Ralph Vaughan Williams produced his most famous settings of six songs, the cycle On Wenlock Edge, for string quartet, tenor and piano (dedicated to Gervase Elwes) in 1909,^[25] and it became very popular after Elwes recorded it with the London String Quartet and Frederick B. Kiddle in 1917. Between 1909 and 1911 George Butterworth produced settings in two collections or cycles, as Six Songs from A Shropshire Lad, and Bredon Hill and other songs. He also wrote an orchestral tone poem on A Shropshire Lad (first performed at Leeds Festival under Arthur Nikisch in 1912).^[26]

Butterworth's death on the Somme in 1916 was considered a great loss to English music; Ivor Gurney, another most important setter of Housman (Ludlow and Teme, a work for voice and string quartet, and a song-cycle on Housman works, both of which won the Carnegie Award)^[27] experienced emotional breakdowns which were popularly (but wrongly) believed to have originated from shell-shock. Hence the fatalistic strain of the poems, and the earlier settings, foreshadowed responses to the universal bereavement of the First World War and became assimilated into them. This was reinforced when their foremost interpreter and performer, Gervase Elwes (who had initiated the music festivals at Brigg in Lincolnshire at which Percy Grainger and others had developed their collections of country music^[28]) died in a horrific accident in 1921. Elwes had been closely identified with English wartime morale, having given six benefit performances of The Dream of Gerontius on consecutive nights in 1916, and many concerts in France in 1917 for British soldiers.^[29]

Among other composers who set Housman songs were John Ireland (song cycle, Land of Lost Content), Michael Head (e.g. 'Ludlow Fair'), Graham Peel (a famous version of 'In Summertime on Bredon'), Ian Venables (Songs of Eternity and Sorrow), and the American Samuel Barber (e.g. 'With rue my heart is laden'). Gerald Finzi repeatedly began settings, though never finished any. Even composers not directly associated with the 'pastoral' tradition, such as Arnold Bax, Lennox Berkeley and Arthur Bliss, were attracted to Housman's poetry. A 1976 catalogue listed 400 musical settings of Housman's poems.^[30] Housman's poetry influenced British music in a way comparable to that of Walt Whitman in the music of Delius, Vaughan Williams and others: Housman's works provided song texts, Whitman's the texts for larger choral works. The contemporary New Zealand composer David Downes includes a setting of "March" on his CD The Rusted Wheel of Things.

Works titled after Housman[link]

Housman is the main character in the 1997 Tom Stoppard play The Invention of Love.^[31] Many titles for novels and films have been drawn from Housman's poetry. The line "There's this to say for blood and breath,/ they give a man a taste for death" supplies the title for Peter O'Donnell's 1969 Modesty Blaise thriller, A Taste for Death, also the inspiration for P. D. James' 1986 crime novel, A Taste for Death, the seventh in her Adam Dalgliesh series. The title of Nicholas Blake's 1949 detective novel Head of a Traveller is a quotation from Housman's parody Fragment of a Greek Tragedy. The last words of the poem "On Wenlock Edge" are used by Audrey R. Langer for the title of the 1989 novel Ashes Under Uricon. The Nobel Prize winning novelist Patrick White named his 1955 novel The Tree of Man after a line in A Shropshire Lad and Arthur C. Clarke's first novel, Against the Fall of Night, is taken from a work in Housman's More Poems. The 2009 novel Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy takes its title from Housman's poem "Reveille",^[32] and a line from Housman's poem XVI "How Clear, How Lovely Bright", was used for the title of the last Inspector Morse book The Remorseful Day by Colin Dexter. Blue Remembered Hills, a television play by Dennis Potter, takes its title from "Into My Heart an Air That Kills" from A Shropshire Lad,^[33] the cycle also providing the name for the James Bond film Die Another Day: "But since the man that runs away / Lives to die another day".

Works[link]

Poetry collections[link]

• A Shropshire Lad (1896)
• Last Poems: Henry Holt and Company (1922)
• A Shropshire Lad: Authorized Edition: Henry Holt and Company (1924)
• More Poems: Barclays Bank LTD. (1936)
• Collected Poems: Henry Holt and Company (1940)
• Collected Poems (1939); the poems included in this volume but not the three above are known as Additional Poems. The Penguin Edition of 1956 includes an Introduction by John Sparrow.
• Manuscript Poems: Eight Hundred Lines of Hitherto Un-collected Verse from the Author's Notebooks, ed. Tom Burns Haber (1955)
• Is My Team Ploughing
• Unkind to Unicorns: Selected Comic Verse, ed. J. Roy Birch (1995; 2nd ed. 1999)
• The Poems of A.E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (1997)

Classical scholarship[link]

• M. Manilii Astronomica (1903–1930; 2nd ed. 1937; 5 vols.)
• D. Iunii Iuuenalis Saturae: editorum in usum edidit (1905; 2nd ed. 1931)
• M. Annaei Lucani, Belli Ciuilis, Libri Decem: editorum in usum edidit (1926; 2nd ed. 1927)
• The Classical Papers of A. E. Housman, ed. J. Diggle and F. R. D. Goodyear (1972; 3 vols.)
• William White, "Housman's Latin Inscriptions", CJ (1955) 159 - 166

Published lectures[link]

These lectures are listed by date of delivery, with date of first publication given separately if different.

• Introductory Lecture (1892)
• "Swinburne" (1910; published 1969)
• Cambridge Inaugural Lecture (1911; published 1969 as "The Confines of Criticism")
• "The Application of Thought to Textual Criticism" (1921; published 1922)
• "The Name and Nature of Poetry" (1933)

Prose collections[link]

Selected Prose, edited by John Carter, Cambridge University Press, 1961

Collected letters[link]

• The Letters of A. E. Housman, ed. Henry Maas (1971)
• The Letters of A. E. Housman, ed. Archie Burnett (2007)

Footnotes[link]

Sources[link]

• Critchley, Julian, 'Homage to a lonely lad', Weekend Telegraph (UK), 23 April 1988.
• Cunningham, Valentine ed., The Victorians: An Anthology of Poetry and Poetics (Oxford: Blackwell, 2000)
• Gow, A. S. F., A. E. Housman: A Sketch Together with a List of his Writings and Indexes to his Classical Papers (Cambridge 1936)
• Graves, Richard Perceval, A.E. Housman: The Scholar-Poet (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 155
• Housman, Laurence, A. E .H.: Some Poems, Some Letters and a Personal Memoir by his Brother (London: Jonathan Cape, 1937)
• Page, Norman, ‘Housman, Alfred Edward (1859–1936)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)
• Palmer, Christopher and Stephen Banfield, 'A. E. Housman', The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan, 2001)
• Shaw, Robin, "Housman's Places" (The Housman Society, 1995)
• Summers, Claude J. ed., The Gay and Lesbian Literary Heritage (New York: Henry Holt and Co., 1995)

Further reading[link]

• Brink, C. O. Lutterworth.com, English Classical Scholarship: Historical Reflections on Bentley, Porson and Housman, James Clarke & Co (2009), ISBN 978-0-227-17299-5.
• C. Efrati, The road of danger, guilt, and shame: the lonely way of A. E. Housman (Associated University Presse, 2002) ISBN 0-8386-3906-2
• Philip Gardner ed., A. E. Housman: The Critical Heritage, a collection of reviews and essays on Housman’s poetry (London: Routledge 1992)
• Holden, A. W. and J. R. Birch, A. E Housman - A Reassessment (Palgrave Macmillan, London 1999)

See also[link]

• The Invention of Love

External links[link]

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: A. E. Housman

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Alfred Edward Housman

• Profile and poems at Poets.org
• Profile and poems at Poetry Foundation
• London Review of Books review of "The Letters of A.E. Housman" 5 July 2007
• BBC Profile 24 June 2009
• "Star man": An article in the TLS by Robert Douglas Fairhurst, 20 June 2007
• "Lost Horizon: The sad and savage wit of A. E. Housman" New Yorker article (5 pages) by Anthony Lane 19 February 2001
• The Housman Society

Works[link]

• Works by Alfred Edward Housman at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about A. E. Housman in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Works by A. E. Housman on Open Library at the Internet Archive
• Free Housman audio readings at Librivox

Dermot Bolger (born 1959) is an Irish novelist, playwright and poet born in Finglas, a suburb of Dublin.

His work is often concerned with the articulation of the experiences of working-class characters who, for various reasons, feel alienated from society. Bolger questions the relevance of traditional nationalist concepts of Irishness, arguing for a more plural and inclusive society.^{[citation needed]} In the late 1970s Bolger set up Raven Arts Press, which he ran until 1992 when he co-founded New Island Press. In May 2010 his wife, Bernie, died.

Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in literature" article:

Night Shift (1985)

This is Bolger's first novel (or novella?). The central protagonist is Donal, a young man from Finglas who works the night shift in a local factory. Donal's girlfriend, Elizabeth, is pregnant and they both live in a caravan at the foot of her parents' garden. Needless to say, her parents are hardly thrilled at the situation and Donal works hard to improve the life he shares with Elizabeth. This is a complex narrative, containing meditations on the prospects for young people in 1980s Ireland and the rupture between tradition (as represented by Elizabeth's family and those in authority) and the future (as represented by Donal and Elizabeth). Whilst the ending is not what one could describe as happy, it is hopeful in that Donal begins to achieve a degree of clarity about his life, including his relationship with Elizabeth, his relationship with society, and, ultimately, what it will mean to be Irish in the latter part of the 20th century. This novel introduces many of the themes that will resurface in much of Bolger's later writing.^{[citation needed]}

The Journey Home (1990)

The Journey Home was originally published by Penguin and was a controversial Irish bestseller. It was later re-issued by Flamingo/HarperCollins. Eighteen years after its publication, it was published in the United States of America by The University of Texas Press and received the lead front cover review on the New York Times Book Review section. The Irish Times aid of it "All 1990s life is there -- drink, drugs, political corruption -- all the words which have been repeated so often now that they have lost their power to shock. Here, they shock."

The Family on Paradise Pier (2005)

The Family on Paradise Pier starts in the tranquil idyll of a Donegal village in 1915 and follows the journeys of one Irish family through the War of Independence, the General Strike in Britain, the dangerous streets of 1930’s Moscow, the Spanish Civil War and on to Soviet gulags, Irish Internment camps and London during the Blitz. The Goold Verschoyle children are born into a respected freethinking Protestant family in a Manor House alive with laughter, debate and fascinating guests. But the world of picnics and childish infatuations is soon under threat as political changes within Ireland and the wider world encroach upon their private paradise.

The Family on Paradise Pier tries to show how quickly a family and a class can find themselves displaced and considered foreigners within their own land, with a new generation forced to invent new roles in which to belong. For Eva the dream is to be an artist, yet her fragile vision cannot cope with first love or the reality of London art school. She finds herself married into a stiff Anglo-Irish family, struggling with growing debts and with trying to keep open her soul to the new perceptions while yearning for personal freedom.

Politics is how Eva’s brothers make sense of their new world. The eldest son, Art, rejects his inheritance to become a hard-line Marxist. Isolating himself from his family, he tries to belong among the poor, a party agitator working as a manual labourer in Dublin, Moscow and London. Brendan, the carefree and less fanatical younger brother, also embraces communism until confronted by its harsh realities in the Spanish Civil War with consequences that will haunt and divide his family.

Based on real-life people, this family saga grows into a kaleidoscopic portrait of the lives, dreams and tensions of a generation finding their own paths in life between the World Wars. Bolger recreates a family in flux, driven by idealism, racked by argument and united by love and the vivid memories of childhood. The character Brendan is based on Brian Goold Vershcoyle who died in a Soviet gulag and Art is based on the real life Irish communist Neil Goold Verschoyle. Eva is based on Sheila Fitzgerald (née Goold Verschoyle), 1903–2000) and the novel itself has its origins in tape recordings that the author made in her caravan in 1992.

Father's Music (1997)

“Music is the pulse of Tracey Evan's life, its beat luring her through dance clubs and rave parties, a seemingly free-spirited 22-year-old London college drop out who laps up the late-night, often ecstasy-induced, pleasures of that city. Yet behind her tough street-wisdom and promiscuity, lurk layers of vulnerability and self-loathing. Her spirit is still in thrall to a past she cannot quit and to memories she cannot obliterate, even by living on a knife-edge of risk.

That risk is never greater than when she enters into an uninhibited world of sexual games and fantasies with Luke Duggan, a married Irish businessman living in London. At once loathsome and tender, the chameleon-like Luke is torn apart by the alternating currents of his infamous Dublin criminal family, from whom he has tried to distance himself.

When family responsibilities force Luke to return to Dublin, taking Tracey with him, their games of risk and chance become frighteningly real. It is her first visit to Ireland, except for a brief, traumatic childhood excursion to seek her father, a wandering traditional musician from Donegal who vanished after Tracey's birth. Now, as Tracey tries to thread a path through the dangerous criminal underbelly of a drug-ridden city, primed to explode, the answers to her questions about herself, her lost father and Luke's ultimate motives become gradually and terrifying intertwined.

In this psychological thriller, Dermot Bolger has fashioned a portrait of a young woman's search for truth in a sea of moral ambuguity, where she can be certain of nothing, least of all her own feelings.

Other novels:

• 1987 and 1991: The Woman’s Daughter
• 1992: Emily’s Shoes
• 1994: A Second Life
• 2000: Temptation
• 2007: The Valparaiso Voyage
• 2005: The Family on Paradise Pier (a story about Brian Goold-Verschoyle)
• 2010: New Town Soul

Plays[link]

Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in literature" article:

• 1989: The Lament for Arthur Cleary
• 1990: Blinded by the Light
• 1990: In High Germany
• 1990: The Holy Ground
• 1991: One Last White Horse
• 1994: A Dublin Bloom
• 1995: April Bright
• 1999: The Passion of Jerome
• 2000: Consenting Adults
• 2005: From these Green Heights
• 2006: The Townlands of Brazil
• 2007: Walking the Road
• 2008: The Consequences of Lightning
• (2010) The Parting Glass* (This stand alone play is a follow up, twenty years on, of the life of Eoin - the emigrant narrator of Bolger's earlier play, In High Germany
• (2012) Tea Chests and Dreams

Poetry[link]

Each year links to its corresponding "[year] in poetry" article:

• 1980: The Habit of Flesh, Raven Arts Press^[1]
• 1981: Finglas Lilies, Raven Arts Press^[1]
• 1982: No Waiting America, Raven Arts Press^[1]
• 1986: Internal Exiles, Dublin: Dolmen^[1]
• 1989: Leinster Street Ghosts, Raven Arts Press^[1]
• 1998: Taking my Letters Back: New and Selected Poems, Dublin: New Island Books^[1]
• 2004: The Chosen Moment, Dublin: New Island Books^[1]
• 2008: External Affairs, 80 pages, Dublin: New Island Books, ISBN 978-1-84840-028-3^[1]

Research work about the author[link]

• La réécriture de l'histoire dans les Romans de Roddy Doyle, Dermot Bolger et Patrick McCabe by Alain Mouchel-Vallon (PhD thesis, 2005, Reims University, France).^[2]
• The State of the Nation: Paradigms of Irishness in the Drama and Fiction of Dermot Bolger by Damien Shortt (PhD thesis, 2006, Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick, Ireland)
• Ryan, Ray. Ireland and Scotland: Literature and Culture, State and Nation, 1966-2000. Oxford University Press, 2002.
• Paschel, Ulrike: No mean city? : the image of Dublin in the novels of Dermot Bolger, Roddy Doyle and Val Mulkerns. - Frankfurt am Main [u.a.] : Lang, 1998. – X, 170 S. - (Aachen British and American studies ; 1). ISBN 3-631-33530-X
• Merriman, Vic: Staging contemporary Ireland : heartsickness and hopes deferred. In: The Cambridge companion to contemporary Irish drama / Shaun Richards, ed. - Cambridge : Cambridge Univ. Pr., 2004 ; pp. 244–257 (On The lament for Arthur Cleary, 1989)
• Murphy, Paul: Inside the immigrant mind : nostalgic versus nomadic subjectivities in late twentieth-century Irish drama. In: Australasian drama studies, 43 (2003, Oct), pp. 128–147 (On A Dublin quartet)
• Tew, Philip: The lexicon of youth in Mac Laverty, Bolger, and Doyle : Theorizing contemporary Irish fiction via Lefebvre's Tenth Prelude. In: Hungarian Journal of English and American Studies, 5:1 (1999), pp. 181–197
• Harte, Liam: A kind of scab : Irish identity in the writings of Dermot Bolger and Joseph O'Connor. In: Irish studies review, 20 (1997 autumn), pp. 17–22
• MacCarthy, Conor: Ideology and geography in Dermot Bolger's The Journey home. In: Irish university review: A journal of Irish studies, 27:1 (1997 Spring-Summer), pp. 98–110
• Merriman, Vic: Centring the wanderer : Europe as active imaginary in contemporary Irish theatre. In: Irish university review: a journal of Irish studies, 27:1 (1997 Spring-Summer), pp. 166–181 (On The Lament of Arthur Cleary)
• Aragay, Mireia: Reading Dermot Bolger's The Holy Ground : national identity, gender and sexuality in post-colonial Ireland. In: Links and letters, 4 (1997), pp. 53–64
• Turner, Tramble T.: Staging signs of gender. In: Semiotics 1994: Annual proceedings volumes of the Semiotic Society of America. 19 / John Deely (ed.) ... New York <NY> : Lang, 1995. pp. 335–344 (On The lament for Arthur Cleary, 1989)
• Dantanus, Ulf.: Antæus in Dublin? In: Moderna språk (97:1) 2003, pp. 37–52.
• Battaglia, Alberto.: Dublino: oltre Joyce. Milan: Unicopli, 2002. pp. 130. (Città letterarie)
• Dumay, Émile-Jean.: Dermot Bolger dramaturge. In: Études irlandaises (27:1) 2002, pp. 79–92.
• Dumay, Émile-Jean.: La subversion de la nostalgie dans The Lament for Arthur Cleary de Dermot Bolger. In: Études irlandaises (21:2) 1996, pp. 111–23.
• Fiérobe, Claude: Irlande et Europe 1990: The Journey Home de Dermot Bolger. In: Études irlandaises (19:2) 1994, pp. 41–49.
• Kearney, Colbert: Dermot Bolger and the dual carriageway. In: Études irlandaises (19:2) 1994, pp. 25–39.
• Shortt, Damien: A River Runs Through It: Irish History in Contemporary Fiction, Dermot Bolger and Roddy Doyle. In: No Country for Old Men : Fresh Perspectives on Irish Literature / Paddy Lyons ; Alison O'Malley-Younger(eds.).Frankfurt am Main [u.a.] - Oxford u.a. : Lang, 2009. pp. 123–141. (Reimagining Ireland ; 4)
• Murphy, Paula:From Ballymun to Brazil: Bolger's Postmodern Ireland. In: Modernity and Postmodernity in a Franco-Irish Context / Eamon Maher ... (eds.). - Frankfurt am Main [u.a.] : Lang, 2008. pp. 161–178. (Studies in Franco-Irish Relations ; 2)
• Shortt, Damien: Dermot Bolger: Gender Performance and Society. In: New Voices in Irish literary Criticism / Paula Murphy ... (eds.). - Lewiston, N.Y.; Lampeter : Edwin Mellen, 2007. pp. 151–166.
• Brihault, Jean: Dermot Bolger, romancier de la mondialisation ? In: Issues of globalisation and secularisation in France and Ireland / Yann Bévant ... (eds.). - Frankfurt, M. [u.a.] : Lang, 2009. pp. 101–122. (Studies in Franco-Irish Relations ; 3)
• Wald, Christina: Dermot Bolger. In: The Methuen drama guide to contemporary Irish playwrights / ed. by Martin Middeke ... - London : Methuen Drama, 2010. pp. 19–36
• Shortt, Damien: Who put the ball in the English net: the privatisation of Irish postnationalism in Dermot Bolger's In High Germany. In: Redefinitions of Irish identity: a postnationalist approach / Irene Gilsenan Nordin ; Carmen Zamorano Llena (eds.). - Frankfurt, M. [u.a.] : Lang, 2010. pp. 103–124. (Cultural identity studies ; 12)
• Imhof, Rüdiger: Dermot Bolger. In: The Modern Irish Novel : Irish Novelists after 1945 / Rüdiger Imhof. - Dublin : Wolfhound Press, 2002. pp. 267-285
• Murphy, Paula: 'Scattering us like seed': Dermot Bolger's postnationalist Ireland. In: Redefinitions of Irish identity: a postnationalist approach / Irene Gilsenan Nordin ; Carmen Zamorano Llena (eds.). - Frankfurt, M. [u.a.] : Lang, 2010. pp. 181-199. (Cultural identity studies ; 12)

Links[link]

Portrait of Dermot Bolger by Olivier Favier http://www.flickr.com/photos/olivierfavier/3795820756/

References[link]

3. Author's website

Lucas Secon, also known by the stage name Lucas, is a Grammy Award, MTV Award and Emmy Award-nominated record producer, songwriter, Golden Poets Award winner, DJ, rapper, singer and artist/conceptualist. He lives in London, United Kingdom.

Secon has contributed to seven number one records and many other singles and albums.^[1] Secon is also known for his own single, "Lucas with the Lid Off", from his 1994 album Lucacentric.

He has contributed to over 50 million album sales and has garnered many multi-platinum, platinum and gold plaques for singles and albums sold and, as his own manager, he has placed all his own records and produced and written for such acts as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, The Pussycat Dolls, Kylie Minogue, The Wanted, Snoop Dogg, Gym Class Heroes, IAM, Sugababes, New Boyz, Cee-lo Green, Steve Aoki, Big Time Rush, Travis McCoy, Mos Def, Cassidy, Toni Braxton, Jordin Sparks, Pixie Lott, Conor Maynard, Fighting With Wire, Sean Paul, Alexandra Burke, Sean Kingston, JLS, The Saturdays, Mohombi, September, Blak Twang, Tweet, Rivers Cuomo, Sly and Robbie, Steve Aoki, Chubb Rock, Kool Keith, Lady Of Rage, Pete Nice, Tanya Lacey, Girls Generation, Tohoshinki and many more.

Lucas Won a BMI US Airplay Award for 400.000 spins of The Pussycat Dolls "I Hate This Part" in 2010. He also won an award for biggest airplay record of the year for Stan Walker's "Black Box" single. Lucas was nominated for an Emmy Award for Big Time Rush"Boyfriend" featuring Snoop Dogg and New Boyz and a Grammy Award and an MTV Award for his own single "Lucas With The Lid Off".

Early life[link]

Secon was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, the son of American entrepreneur and Pottery Barn founder Paul Secon, and Danish artist Berta Moltke.

Secon spent his childhood between New York and Copenhagen while also living in Venice, Italy and London, England before settling in New York after graduating from high school. He attended New York University, majoring in Psychology and Philosophy with a minor in Music Business.

Secon won Spin Magazine's Golden Poets Award for his poem "The Ice Age" (out of 150,000 entrants), which became a song on To Rap My World Around You. Paul Secon and Lucas also wrote a song together called "Red,White and Blues",detailing America's unfaithful relationship with its own people and it's shady,opportunistic foreign politics/policies on his album Lucacentric.

Career[link]

1990-1994: solo career[link]

Signed to Uptown Records by Andre Harrell, Secon debuted in 1990 with the album To Rap My World Around You.

In 1993 he signed with Atlantic Records and released his 1994 album Lucacentric, a much more jazz-influenced work than his previous effort. Lucacentric hit the Top 40 in at least 10 countries. It also spawned the single "Lucas with the Lid Off", which peaked at #29 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and became his only Top 40 hit as a solo artist. The music video for his the single, directed by Michel Gondry, received a Grammy nomination 37th Annual Grammy Awards - and a MTV Video Music Award nomination for Best Male Video^[2] in 1995. The video features a very distinctive and memorable style, being shot in one take among a variety of different sets. It was voted #4 in an MTV list of the "Best Videos of All-Time".^{[citation needed]}

He has also worked as a DJ for many different artists such as Lifer's Group, Jamalski, Yasmin, and even for his own work. He started DJing as a 15 year old in Copenhagen, Denmark, even entering the Danish DMC World DJ Championships contest.

Following the release of Lucacentric, Secon's focus switched to production and songwriting.

Family[link]

Lucas' father, Paul Secon, is perhaps best known as the co-founder of Pottery Barn along with his brother Morris Secon. He also worked as a songwriter for Nat King Cole, The Ink Spots, and The Mills Brothers and many more. His mother, Danish artist Berta Moltke, was the head of the Danish Academy of Arts for several years and has exhibited around the world for the last 35 years.

Discography[link]

Albums[link]

• 1990: To Rap My World Around You
• 1994: Lucacentric

Singles[link]

• 1991: "Show Me Your Moves"
• 1994: "Wau Wau Wau"
• 1994: "Lucas with the Lid Off"
• 2001: "My Feet Hurt" (featuring Blue)
• 2001: "My Feet Work"

Production discography[link]

• Christina Aguilera Upcoming RCA Records US 2012
• Conor Maynard Upcoming EMI Records UK 2012
• Blue 2 upcoming singles Cowritten and produced. BlueWorld/Universal Records 2012.
• Tanya Lacey singles RCA UK 2012 Cowritten and Produced
• Bluey Robinson "Coming Back" single.November 2011 RCA UK Cowritten and Produced.
• Big Time Rush "Show Me" 2012 Columbia Records US.Produced/cowritten.
• The Saturdays"The Way You Watch Me" feat Travis McCoy Cowritten/produced Geffen Records 2012
• Gym Class Heroes cowritten and produced Fueled by Ramen US
• Keke Palmer cowritten and produced Interscope Records
• Alexandra Burke upcoming single.Cowritten/coproduced. RCA Records UK 2012
• Aqua single "Like a Robot" Universal Records 2011 -writing/production.Album Gold.
• Mohombi"In Your Head"single Island/2101/Universal Records 2012 january and other songs Production/writing.
• Steve Aoki feat Rivers Cuomo of Weezer "Earthquakey People" cowrite.LP Top 10 US Itunes.
• Metro Station "D.T." Columbia US 2011.Production/writing.
• Miranda Cosgrove "Face of Love" Produced and cowritten from upcoming EP March 2011 Columbia US
• J Pearl "Must Be A Reason" 2011 Strictly Rhythm single -Produced/cowritten
• September"Party in My head"(Top 3 Itunes) and "Resuscitate Me"(Top 3 Itunes) singles production/cowriting Family Tree/Sony/Robbins 2011-Album 2 x Platinum.
• Double "Lips" 2011 single August 10-Avex. Produced and cowritten.
• Cee-Lo Green "It's OK" reproduction/remix Atlantic Records 2010
• Cody Simpson "Don't Cry Your Heart Out" Atlantic Records December 2010 Cowritten and Produced -Top 20 Billboard Top 200 albums.
• Big Time Rush feat Snoop Dogg and New Boyz "Boyfriend" single Columbia US 2011- Album Top 3 Billboard 200 and GOLD in US.Cowritten and Produced.US Top 30 CHR/Top 40 radio-Gold.Nominated for an Emmy Award 2011.
• JLS 'Don't Talk About Love" Cowritten and Produced .# 2 UK Official albums chart.3 x Platinum.
• Tohoshinki "Jumon Mirotic" # 1 single Japan,South Korea,Tawiwan,no 1 album 2 x Platinum -Avex Rhythm Japan.
• Girls Generation "Echo" from Oh (400k ww) and "Lazy Girl" from "The Boys".1 Million sold SM Entertainment/Avex
• The Wanted "Heart Vacancy" Geffen Records UK 2010 cowritten # 2 UK Single, # 12 European Billboard Hot 100.Silver sales UK for single-(200.000+) Album # 4 UK and 2 x Platinum.
• Kylie Minogue "Get Outta My Way" single cowritten/coproduced Parlophone 2010.No 1 album,1 Million sales ww- Top 5 radio hit Uk-top 20 radio hit worldwide.
• Shayne Ward "Someone Like You" and "Must Be A Reason Why" produced and cowritten SYCO 2010 album "Obsession".
• Sofi Bonde "L.R." Atlantic Records 2010 production/cowriting
• Stan Walker "Black Box" single Sony Music November 22. 2009 2xPlatinum # 1 single for 12 weeks and counting sales/airplay Australia,NZ.-cowrite.Airplay record of the year.
• The Cab "g.l." single Produced and cowritten Fuelled By Ramen/Atlantic 2010
• Pixie Lott "Gravity" single 2010 Mercury Top 5 UK Airplay cowritten.Also 3 productions and cowrites on Def Jam debut.1 million albums worldwide.
• Travis McCoy "Need You" single Produced and cowritten Fuelled By Ramen/Atlantic Records 2010
• Britney Spears "it's a secret for a minute" Jive Records 2009
• Fighting With Wire "n.b." Atlantic Records US.Produced with Nick Raskulinecz (Foo Fighters)-cowritten.2010.
• Sean Paul "Lookin At Me" with Toni Braxton -the refix Atlantic Records 2010
• Toni Braxton "Make My Heart", "Lookin At Me","Yesterday"(dancehall radio remix) Atlantic Records 2009.Produced and cowritten.Album Top 10 Billboard.
• Jordin Sparks "Walking On Snow" and "It Takes More" from the album Battlefield 2 productions and cowrites. Released July 21, 2009 Jive Records
• Sean Kingston "Face Drop" 2nd single from 2009 album "Tomorrow" Epic Records.Produced and cowritten.# 1 South Africa,New Zealand-Top 30 US airplay,Top 30 US Itunes.Sales 485,000 copies and counting.
• The Pussycat Dolls "I Hate This Part" Interscope Records (worldwide radio and sales hit in 25 countries-3 million plus sold)
• Sarah Connor 'Under My Skin" Universal Records (#4 Germany, #13 Austria, #19 Billboard European singles,Album Europe top 10,Germany # 3)
• Madcon "Share My Sky" upcoming single Bonnier Amigo/Sony
• Jordyn Taylor "F.I." upcoming single production and cowriting Interscope Records 2010
• Paradiso Girls "echo" upcoming single production and cowriting Interscope Records 2010
• Martin Hedegaard "Show The World" Sony BMG Records (#1 single Platinum Denmark, #1 album-3x Platinum)
• Luigi Masi "Armed With Love" single Universal 2009
• SHINee "Love Like Oxygen" SM Entertainment # 1 Korea
• Freefonix "singles" (upcoming)
• Hayden Pannetiere single"top up" (Hollywood Records)(upcoming)
• Tohoshinki single "Jumon: Mirotic" SM Entertainment (#1 Gold single Oricon Weekly Chart Japan, #4 Billboard Hot 100 Japan, Album # 2 Platinum album in Japan-The Secret Code,#1 South Korea, #1 China, #1 Taiwan, #1 album selling 500.000+ in S.Korea alone. Highest selling album in 6 years [Korea]) 1 Million plus worldwide.
• Cozi Costi single"Stamina" 2009 Ultra Records
• Paula Deanda "Take Off The Brakes" 2nd single August J Records 2009
• Sugababes "Virgin Sexy", "Million Miles", "On The Run", "Future Shokk", "Betcha" 3 x Platinum-millions worldwide Island Records
• Aaron Carter "Not Too Young, Not Too Old", "Come Follow Me", "Leave it up to me", "Another Earthquake", "America Ayo". multiple singles-millions worldwide. 2 x Platinum Jimmy Neutron soundtrack 1st single ,750K +. Uk # 24 single
• Liberty X "Ill Be Remembering","whatcha doin tonight","Shotgun","In My Bed". Gold album EMI Records
• Keisha White feat Cassidy"dont care who knows"single UK # 29 hit,"Weakness in me"-UK # 15.Eight songs on album.Gold. WEA
• Outlandish5 songs on Platinum album"Closer Than Veins" SonyBmg
• RB "mama" # 3 single UK. Top 40 album Atlantic Records UK
• Lene "its your duty"single 500k sales top 3 Scandinavia,Italy,Spain,far east
• Sly and Robbie "shoulder to cry on"-remix Atlantic Records
• Mos Def"Miss fat booty pt 2" remix,add production Rawkus Records
• Boom "fallin" # 11 UK single plus whole album London Records
• Tweet "smokin cigarettes" remix Violator Records
• Mark Morrison "Blackstabbers" feat Daz Dillinger Uk top 20 single. "Horny" remix Uk top 10
• Sophie Ellis-Bextor "Take Me Home" UK # 4 single remix Polydor Records
• Fu-El "Please,please" # 1 single Gold Emi Records
• Safri Duo "agogo mosse" off 2 x platinum album"3.5 Universal records
• Chubb Rock "Bring em home safely" off Gold album "The One". Select Records
• Tyler James "why do I do" UK # 24 single Island records
• Billie Piper "Misfocusing" and 2 others Gold album "Walk of Life" Virgin Records
• Lucas "Lucas with the lid off" and album Top 10 worldwide 1 million plus Atlantic/Wea Records "Show me Your Moves" Uptown Records
• Omero Mumba "Lil Big Man" Uk top 40 single Polydor Records
• Phoebe One "get On It" Uk top 40 single Castle Communications
• Abs Breen "wanna get with you" BMG Records
• Blazin squad "Twisted Up" off Gold album Atlantic Records
• Yasmin "wanna dance" US top 50 Billboard Geffen records
• IAM "STG" Wea
• Lewis Taylor "Bittersweet" rmx, add prod Island records
• Emmy Rossum songs on forthcoming album Geffen Records
• Sprinkler "Leave em somethin to desire" UK top 40 single Island Records
• Shara Nelson(Massive Attack-Unfinished Sympathy) 2 songs on album"Friendly Fire". Chrysalis Records. Gold.
• Blak Twang "Dettwork South East" remix and additional production Wall of Sound. classic Uk remix. "entrpeneurs"-produced and cowritten Wall of Sound.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Interview, HitQuarters May 2010

Tatiana Troyanos (Greek: Τατιάνα Τρωϊάνου, Tatiána Trōïánou, pronounced [tatˈjana troˈjanu], September 12, 1938 – August 21, 1993) was an American mezzo-soprano of Greek and German descent.

Early life[link]

Born in New York City, Troyanos grew up in Forest Hills, Queens, where she attended Forest Hills High School.^[1] In high school, her nickname was "Totsie." [1]

Before making her operatic debut, Troyanos appeared as a chorus member in the original production of The Sound of Music.

Professional career[link]

In 1963, Troyanos made her professional operatic debut at the New York City Opera as Hippolyta in Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The next year, she sang the role of Marina Mnishek in that company's first production of Mussorgsky's Boris Godunov, as well as a variety of other roles over the next several seasons. She left for Europe to make the Hamburg State Opera her home base for the next decade, returning for her Metropolitan Opera debut as Octavian in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier in 1976. [2]

A mainstay and "one of the most beloved artists at the Metropolitan Opera" [3] from 1976 to her death in 1993, she was internationally revered for her uniquely sensual, burnished sound, her versatility and beauty, as well as the thrilling intensity of all her performances. In the early 1980s, Troyanos appeared in several opening-night performances at that house including Adalgisa in Bellini's Norma (opposite Renata Scotto), Octavian in Richard Strauss's Der Rosenkavalier, and Didon in Berlioz's Les Troyens.

The many and varied roles she portrayed on stage also included Monteverdi's Poppea (in Il coronazione di Poppea); Cavalli's Diana (in La Calisto); Handel's Ariodante and Giulio Cesare (in the operas of the same names); Purcell's Dido (in Dido and Aeneas); Mozart's Cherubino (in Le Nozze di Figaro), Donna Elvira (in Don Giovanni), Dorabella (in Così fan tutte), and Sesto (in La Clemenza di Tito); Bellini's Romeo (in I Capuleti e i Montecchi); Donizetti's Giovanna Seymour (in Anna Bolena) and Maffio Orsini (in Lucrezia Borgia); Verdi's Amneris (in Aida) and Eboli (in Don Carlo); Wagner's Brangäne (in Tristan und Isolde), Fricka (in Das Rheingold), Waltraute (in Götterdämmerung), and Kundry (in Parsifal); Humperdinck's Hansel (in Hansel and Gretel); Richard Strauss's Composer (in Ariadne auf Naxos) and Clairon (in Capriccio); Johann Strauss's Prince Orlofsky (in Die Fledermaus); Saint-Saëns' Dalila (in Samson et Dalila), Massenet's Charlotte (in Werther); Offenbach's Giulietta (in Les contes d'Hoffmann); Mascagni's Santuzza (in Cavalleria Rusticana); Berg's Countess Geschwitz (in Lulu); Bartok's Judith (in Bluebeard's Castle); Stravinsky's Jocasta (in Oedipus Rex) and Baba the Turk (in The Rake's Progress); Penderecki's Jeanne (in The Devils of Loudun); and Glass's Isabella (in The Voyage).

In 1984 she sang with the Boston Symphony in the world premiere of Act I of Rachmaninoff's opera Monna Vanna, which had been left in piano score by the composer and orchestrated by Igor Buketoff.

She may be most famous for her Met renditions of Venus in Wagner's Tannhäuser in the 1980's (and especially the 1984 "Live from the Met" video recording with Richard Cassilly), a part she sang 21 times at the Met from 1978 thru 1992.

Discography[link]

Troyanos also enjoyed an equally versatile career as a recording artist, appearing in the title role of Sir Georg Solti's acclaimed recording of Bizet's Carmen, Cherubino in Karl Böhm's 1968 recording of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, and as Anita in Leonard Bernstein's high-profile operatic recording of West Side Story, among others.

Illness[link]

Troyanos died August 21st, 1993 at the age of 54 in New York City from breast cancer, which had metastasized to her liver. She had successfully concealed her illness from the vast majority of her colleagues, having sung her last Met performance May 1st of that year as Waltraute to Gwyneth Jones' Brünnhilde in Wagner's epic Götterdämmerung. She is buried in Pinelawn Cemetery on Long Island. In 1994, the Metropolitan Opera performed a concert in memory of Troyanos; in his tribute, Music Director James Levine wrote, "The idea that we are gathered here ... to pay memorial tribute to Tatiana Troyanos is incomprehensible. What it means, of course, is that our Metropolitan Opera family has lost one of the most important, beloved artists and friends in its entire history."

Troyanos was one of three female opera stars of international stature who succumbed to cancer in 1993 in or near their 54th year. The other were sopranos Lucia Popp and Arleen Auger.

Voice and Artistry[link]

"During the 1979-80 season at the Met," Robert Wilder Blue has written, "Troyanos sang Hansel and Kundry (both in house role debuts) and Eboli. There have certainly been other singers who have sung these three roles. But, it is hard to imagine another singer having the ability to sing them all as well as she did and in one season. . . . The voice was even throughout and seamless between registers; the breath control never failed. There was an intensity in the voice that was like that of Callas. The colors ranged from husky to steely with an extraordinary number of hues in between. It was powerful and beautiful -- at home in Handel and Mozart as well as Wagner, Strauss and Berg. Throughout her career she had thrilling, secure high notes. Her characters lived: they existed in the imaginary circumstances with the broadest emotional range and the most specific attention to the moment. In this regard she was like the greatest singing actors of recent time. . . . She was a combination of contradictions: goddess-like power and human frailty, a glamorous woman and an impulsive young man. . . . Looking at photographs of Troyanos in her various roles one can see the amazing gallery of characters. As Didon she stands with regal bearing, but the expression on her face is one of vulnerability, almost pain. As Geschwitz she looks strong and proud but guarded. Her Hansel is bursting with impishness; her Giulietta is glamorous and seductive. As Jocasta she has a white streak in her hair that makes her look 20 years older, an indomitable matriarch. As the Composer her energy and idealism burst from the page." [4]

On a Metropolitan Opera broadcast tribute, Cori Ellison said: "In a way, everything we need to know about Tatiana Troyanos is right there in that astonishing, instantly recognizable voice - generous, driven, dark, sumptuous, noble, vulnerable, haunted, ardent, earthy, otherworldly, eccentric, supple, brilliant, and most of all, beautiful. . . . if you love it, you can’t get enough of it, and you love it as much for the feelings it evokes as for its sheer sound. . . . Here’s the artist as shaman, a sort of androgynous everywoman who seems to have experienced every peak and valley we have, and is able to give voice to it on our behalf." [5]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tatiana Troyanos Archives
• Tatiana Troyanos bulletin board