Books: Housman's Housman

MY BROTHER, A. E. HOUSMAN—Laurence Housman—Scribner ($3).

When a writer is dead, his admirers feel that at least he is now safe: there will be no senile juvenilia from him. Then comes the literary executor. And the executor publishes more, and more, and more posthumous stuff, each batch a little feebler than the last. Such was the case with Katherine Mansfield; such is now the case with A. E. Housman. Admirers of Housman who have to sit helplessly by while his brother Laurence continues his well-meaning but damaging publications may well feel that the...