Mo the Caller - as you say, sometimes spelling is important, sometimes not, but I would suggest that outside the realm of pharmacy (where giving a similar sounding, but differently named drug, could be a matter of life or death) it doesn't really matter that much. Let's face it - the TXT SPK generation don't even use words!

As for this thread, in the first posting, the Subject box says "Subject: Captain Webb the swimmer", which I suspect was originally also the title of the thread, and asked about the song of the Betjeman poem (incidentally - Firefox internal spellchecker doesn't like "Betjeman" as a spelling) and says "I can't imagine JB pinching an A E Housman title". Three postings down someone mentions "A.E. Houseman's poem of the same name". I can't say that I had even noticed that two different spellings had been used. It certainly didn't prevent me finding the complete work online.

The wibbly wobbly web is pretty good at ignoring spelling on information searches -

try typing "a shrpshire ld" into Wikipedia and it produces page asking "Did you mean: a shropshire lad".

Type "Houseman" and you will get to a page listing amongst other things, a junior doctor and around ten people (real or fiction) with that surname. Add initials and you get a different result.

Type "A E Houseman" or "A.E. Houseman" and you are automatically redirected to a page for "Alfred Edward Housman".

This fuzzy search handles bigger differences. Try a lower case germanic "a e hausmann" and you will be asked "Did you mean: a e housman".

"betjemin" produces "Did you mean: benjamin" followed by links to articles, the first of which is "John Betjeman (redirect from John Betjamin)".

I do not think we need seriously worry about a missing, misplaced or supernumerary letter preventing us finding a poet!

That said, for the sake of accuracy:

English classical scholar and poet Alfred Edward Housman, usually known as A. E. Housman, wrote "A Shropshire Lad", which is a cycle of sixty-three poems, many of the poems are simply numbered for their place in the work. Some of the poems have an individual title, but no poem in the cycle is named "A Shropshire Lad".

English poet, writer and broadcaster Sir John Betjeman, CBE, wrote "A Shropshire Lad", which is a single poem about the ghost of Captain Matthew Webb (19 January 1848—24 July 1883). Webb was from Shropshire, and in August 1875 was the first man to swim the English Channel.

Quack!
GtD.