Alfred Edward Housman was born in England in 1859, the oldest of seven children in the family. Housman's younger brother Laurence became a famous playwright, his sister Clemence a writer of short stories and novels. Housman became one of the most esteemed classical scholars of his time and a respected poet. He first attended Bromsgrove School, a school that stressed Greek and Latin studies. In 1877, he received a scholarship to St. John's College in Oxford, where he continued his study of the classical languages. Although he was an excellent student while at Oxford, he left without graduating because he failed his final examination. A year later he returned to Oxford to finish his degree. For the next several years, he worked in the London Patent Office, all the while publishing articles for classical journals. In 1892, based on the merit of his published articles, he was appointed Professor of Latin at University College London. He published his first and most famous book of poems, A Shropshire Lad, in 1896. The anthology has 63 poems based on difficulties he had faced in life, and the book hasn't been out of print since its publication.