Tuesday, July 13, 2010

Nathan Burton: English Journeys

OMG! Utterly beautiful small paperbacks printed on uncoated paper. I ran into A Shropshire Lad while I was hanging out in my friend's Lewisham bathroom. It was arranged in a neat pile along with his boyfriend's comic books and Popular Science magazines. It was the most beautiful book I saw on my trip. When I asked Vestal about the author, A.E. Houseman, he said he came from rural Worcestershire, a place of gardens, streams and woods. He attended Oxford, where he met his one and only love, a straight, beefy rowing jock named Moses Jackson. Houseman became a famous poet and Latinist. In 1896, he published A Shropshire Lad, a book of sixty three poems speaking of loss and loneliness, Redcoats, hangings and ale. Nathan Burton has designed at least twenty books in the English Journeys series.