Gerard Manley Hopkins

Life
1844-1889; b. Essex; converted Roman Catholic, 1866; studied for Jesuit priesthood at Stonyhurst, 1868; considered a tactless preacher, he compared the Church to a cow with seven distended teats in a sermon on the Eucharist to a group of devout London ladies; appt. to chair of Greek and Latin at UCD (Catholic University), under John Newman, 1884, against virulent opposition of Archb. William Walsh (‘To seem a stranger lies my life / Among strangers’);

subjected to Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius and overwhelmed by admin. and academic work, ill and depressed; passed time at Clongowes Wood College, Dromore (Co. Down), and the Cassidy family, friends of the Jesuits and ‘loyalists’ at Monasterevin House and both Togher House in Monasterevin; wrote Dark Sonnets in Ireland; d. 8 June; bur. in Jesuit plot at Glasnevin Cemetery; there is a Hopkins Quarterly and an annual summerschool at Monasterevin conducted under the aegis of the poet Desmond Egan. ODNB OCEL OCIL

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Works
Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, ed. Robert Bridges [2nd edn.,] with app. of additional poems, and Critical Introduction by Charles Williams (OUP 1930), xvi, 159pp.; Claude Colleer Abbott, ed., The Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges (OUP 1935; 1955); Christopher Devlin, S.J., ed., The Sermons and Devotional Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins (London 1959) [infra].

See also R. K. R. Thornton & Catherine Phillips, ed., The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Vols. I & II: Correspondence (OUP 2012), 1,008pp.

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Criticism
Gerald Roberts, ed. & intro., Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Critical Heritage (London: Routledge 1987), xiv, 400pp. [intro. pp.1-47]; Matthew Campbell, ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ireland: ‘at a thírd / Remove’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1997), pp.45-56; Norman White, Hopkins in Ireland (UCD Press 2002), 236pp. [reviewed by Kevin Kiely, Books Ireland, Sept. 2002, p.201.]

There is a Gerald Manley Hopkines Website - online.

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Commentary
Peter Costello, Clongowes Wood (1991), ‘Gerard Manly [sic] Hopkins found some peace there during those last years in Ireland (p. 151); MS of The Soldier, written at Clongowes (shown 153 facing).

W. B. Stanford, Ireland and the Classical Tradition (IAP 1976; 1984), Hopkins’ letters during his time in Dublin (1884-89) suggest many promising lines of research, especially in Greek metrics; he published nothing of note in classics, and his predilection for Plato and Duns Scotus made for intellectual incompatibility with the Aristotelians in the College. A legend persists that on one occasion the members of his class persuaded him to let them drag him by the heels round the classroom to demonstrate Achilles’ treatment of Hector’s corpse at Troy, a rather drastic exercise in what Aristotle in his Poetics terms ‘joining physically in the action of one’s subject’. [65]

Frank Tuohy, Yeats (1976), gives an an account of Hopkins’s visit to the studio of John Butler Yeats, as retold in his letter to Coventry Patmore, 7 Nov., and his judgement on Mosada, a copy of which W. B. Yeats presented to him, ‘strained and unworkable allegory about a young man and a sphinx on a rock in the sea (how did they get there? What did they eat?, and so on ...)’ (Tuohy, p.39; see also Ellmann, Yeats: The Man and the Masks, 1948, p.50; and ftn.; quoted from Further Letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Oxford 1938, pp.225-56.)

Brian Cosgrove, ‘A small belated atonement’, review of Noram White, Hopkins in Ireland, in The Irish Times (13 July 2002, Weekend, p.8): ‘[Hopkins,] “a thorough John Bull, incapable of understanding Rebel Ireland”, according to fellow-Jesuit and fellow-Englishman Joseph Darlington - was always fated to “seem the the stranger” in the Irish society of that time. Such isolation (only fitfully alleviated by his sojourns in Monasterevin with the loyalist Catholic family, Cassidys) would weigh heavily on his sensitive nature. Given, too, the uncongenial of Hopkins’s teaching and his onerous examining duties as professor of classics at University College Dublin, as well as his susceptibility to depression, a psychological and spiritual crisis was perhaps inevitable. Thus, in 1885 we find him referring (in a letter to Robert Bridges) to “that coffin of weakness and dejection in which I live, without even the hope of change”.’ Cosgrove notes that White goes beyond conventional biography to focus on the poetic composition that emerged as “an unorthodox personal resource” from Hopkins’s “desperate situation in Ireland” [White], but notes that the inference concerning Christian expectations of justice in a fallen world appears simplistic; remarks on impeccable scholarship and consistently sensitive responses to the poems.

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Quotations
Sermons (1959): ‘... banishment is a civil death, a being departed, dead and gone, to all the blessings of the commonweal, home and country, friends and neighbours, power, the franchise, all; disfranchisement is a civil death within the commonwealth; infamy is a death to fame; imprisonment is death to freedom, an abridgement of life’s play... For he that would by high treason break up the commonwealth or cut off its sovereign head, he that would cut his brother citizen off from its advantages or make life within the commonwealth a curse instead of a blessing, he shall be cursed and broken off and cut away from the commonwealth. So that this is the general rule of commonwealths and the laws in them - the man that keeps them shall live in them and enjoy their blessings, he that breaks them utterly shall lose them utterly and die.’ (Ed. Christopher Devlin, 1959, p.19; cited by Matthew Campbell, ‘Gerard Manley Hopkins and Ireland: “at a thírd / Remove”’, in Bullán: An Irish Studies Journal, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 1997), p.54.

Selfhood: ‘When I consider my selfbeing, my consciousness and feeling of myself, of I and me above and in all things, which is more distinctive that the taste of ale or alum, the smell of walnutleaf or camphor, and incommunicable to another man (as when I was a child I used to ask the question what it must be to be someone else?) Nothing in Nature comes near this unspeakable stress of pitch, distinctiveness, and selving, this selfbeing of my own.’ (Quoted in Robert Bernard Martin, Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life, Harper Collins [1991], 448pp.)

On Ireland: ‘Five wasted years spent in Ireland ... I wish then for death’ (Diary; quoted in Kevin Kiely, review of Norman White, Hopkins in Ireland, UCD Press [2002])

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References

British Library from 1975 at June 1998), WORKS, [1]; Thomas Hugh Dunne, Gerard Manley Hopkins a comprehensive bibliography; [2]; Poems and prose Hopkins. c1996; [3]; The wreck of the Deutschland Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1996; [4]; ‘God’s grandeur’ and other poems Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1995; [5]; Pied beauty a selection of poems Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1994; [6]; Robert Van de Weyer, ed., and intro., The complete poems with selected prose Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1996; [7]; Donald Walhout, Selected poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins with modern English paraphrases. c1995; [8]; Gerald Roberts, ed., Selected prose Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1980; [9]; The works of Gerard Manley Hopkins with an introduction and bibliography. c1994; [10]; John McDermott, ed,. Hopkins' Lancashire sesquicentennial essays. 1994; [11]; Catherine Phillips [ed.,], Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1995; [12]; Peter Feeney, ed., Selected poems Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1994; [13]; The windhover. 1958; [14]; Geoffrey Moore, sel. and intro., Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1993; [15]; Thomas Hardy és Gerald Manley Hopkins versei [válogatta Sz. Kiss Csaba]. 1985; [16]; Claude Colleer Abbott,ed., The letter of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges. 1955; [17]; Selected poems Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1992; [18]; Norman H. MacKenzie, ed. and notes, The later poetic manuscripts of Gerard Manley Hopkins in facsimile edited with annotations, transcriptions of obscure words and an explanatory. 1991; [19]; William Foltz, Todd K. Bender, eds., A concordance to the sermons of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1989; [20]; Catherine Phillips, ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins selected letters. 1991, c1990; [21]; Norman H. Mackenzie, intro., The early poetic manuscripts and note-books of Gerard Manley Hopkins in facsimile edited with annotations, transcriptions of unpublished; passages and an explanatory. 1989; [22]; Norman H. Mackenzie, ed., The poetical works of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1990; [23]; Jonathan Baylis, ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins portrait of a poet video cassette and book with interview with Peter Gale and selected poems and prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins illustrated by Mark Adams. 1989; [24]; John McDermott, Hopkins in Lancashire selected writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1989; [25]; Catherine Phillips, ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins selected letters. 1990; [26]; [deleted item by modern namesake]; Walford Davies, ed., The major poems [of] Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1979; [28]; W. Bronzwaer, ed., Gedichten keuze uit zijn poëzie met vertalingen en commentaren Gerald Manley Hopkins samengesteld. [1984]; [29]; Pierre Leyris, choix et traduction, Poèmes accompagnés de proses et de dessins Gerard Manley Hopkins. [1980]; [30]; [[deleted items by modern namesake]; [37]; Catherine Phillips, ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1986; [38]; W.H. Gardner, ed., Poems and prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1953; [39]; [deleted item by modern namesake]; K.E. Smith, sel. and ed., with notes, Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry and prose. 1976; [41]; Robert J. Dilligan and Todd K. Bender, comp., A concordance to the English poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1986; [42]; Stanislaw Baranczak, [ed.,] Wybór poezji Gerard Manley Hopkins wyboru dokonal, przelozyl i wstepem opatrzyl. 1981; [43]; Paola Bottalla Nordio, intro. and notes, The wreck of the Deutschland Gerard Manley Hopkins testo. 1979; [44]; Franco Marucci, ed., Il silenzio e la parola Gerard Manley Hopkins [ampia scelta antologica corredata da traduzione a fronte da]. 1977; [45]; Penmaen Pool for the visitors' book at the inn Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1985; [46]; Epithalamion Gerard Manley Hopkins the linocut illustrations are by J. Martin Pitts. 1982; [47]; Kris Long, [trans.] Poemoj Gerard Manley Hopkins Esperantigis. 1978. COMM, [1]; Margaret Johnson, Gerard Manley Hopkins and tractarian poetry. c1997; [2]; Thomas Hugh Dunne, Gerard Manley Hopkins a comprehensive bibliography [3]; Donald Walhout, ed., Selected poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins with modern English paraphrases. c1995; [4]; The works of Gerard Manley Hopkins with an introduction and bibliography. c1994; [5]; Gerald Roberts, ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins the critical heritage edited 1995, c1987; [6]; Virginia Ridley Ellis, Gerard Manley Hopkins and the language of mystery. c1991; [7]; A.J. Sebastian, Aesthetic and religious quest in Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1994; [8]; Catherine Phillips, ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1995; [9]; Anthony Mortimer, ed., The authentic cadence centennial essays on Gerard Manley Hopkins c1992; [10]; Franco Marucci, The fine delight that fathers thought rhetoric and medievalism in Gerard Manley Hopkins. c1994; [11]; Gerald Roberts, Gerard Manley Hopkins a literary life. 1994; [12]; Jude V. Nixon, Gerard Manley Hopkins and his contemporaries Liddon, Newman, Darwin, and Pater. 1994; [13]; Geoffrey Moore sel. and intro., Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1993; [14]; John Gallagher, Gerard Manley Hopkins Jesuit and poet. c1992; [15]; The random grim forge a study of social ideas in the work of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1992; [16]; Mary Theresa Kyne, Country parsons, country poets George Herbert and Gerard Manley Hopkins as spiritual autobiographers, introductory notes Samuel J. Hazo and Albert C. Labriola, ills. by Scott McGrath and Mary Seton Wacker. c.1992; [17]; Claude Colleer Abbott, ed., The letter of Gerard Manley Hopkins to Robert Bridges, with notes & an introduction. 1955; [18]; James Olney, The language(s) of poetry Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins. c1993; [19]; Jospeh Magoon, sel., A bibliography of writings about Gerard Manley Hopkins from 1985 to 1990,. c1993; [20]; Shirley M.C. Johnson and Todd K. Bender,ed., The collected poems of Canon Richard Watson Dixon, 1833-1900. c1989; [21]; Robert Bernard Martin, Gerard Manley Hopkins a very private life. 1992, c1991; [22]; Norman H. MacKenzie, intro., The later poetic manuscripts of Gerard Manley Hopkins in facsimile edited with annotations, transcriptions of obscure words and an explanatory. 1991; [23]; A concordance to the sermons of Gerard Manley Hopkins William Foltz, Todd K. Bender. 1989; [24]; The Ignatian personality of Gerard Manley Hopkins David Anthony Downes. c1990; [25]; Gerard Manley Hopkins selected letters edited by Catherine Phillips. 1991, c1990; [26]; The fine delight centenary essays on Gerard Manley Hopkins edited by Francis L. Fennell. c1989; [27]; Gerard Manley Hopkins a very private life Robert Bernard Martin. 1991; [28]; The early poetic manuscripts and note-books of Gerard Manley Hopkins in facsimile edited with annotations, transcriptions of unpublished; passages and an explanatory introduction by Norman H. Mackenzie. 1989; [29]; The sacramental vision of Gerard Manley Hopkins a centennial tribute. c1989; [30]; Norman H. Mackenzie, The poetical works of Gerard Manley Hopkins edited by. 1990; [31]; W.A.M. Peters, Gerard Manley Hopkins: a tribute. c1984; [32]; Jonathan Baylis, Gerard Manley Hopkins portrait of a poet video cassette and book including interview with; Peter Gale and selected poems and prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins illustrated by Mark Adams. 1989; [33]; John McDermott, ed., and intro., Hopkins in Lancashire selected writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1989; [34]; Sheila Deane, Bardic style in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins, W. B. Yeats & Dylan Thomas. c1989; [35]; Catherine Phillips, sel. and ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1990; [36]; Maria R. Lichtmann, The contemplative poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. c1989; [37]; J. R. Watson, The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1987; [38]; Paddy Kitchen, Gerard Manley Hopkins a life. 1989; [39]; Walford Davies , The major poems [of]; Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1979; [40]; María Pilar Abad García, La unidad en la obra de Gerard Manley Hopkins su literatura epistolar. 1983; [41]; Marylou Mott, ‘Mined with a motion’ the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. c1984; [42]; Anthony Kenny, God and two poets Arthur Hugh Clough and Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1988; [43]; R.J.C. Watt, ed., Selected poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1987; [44]; The Christocentre theme in Gerard Manley Hopkins' ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’. c1952; [45: Ma. Pilar Abad García , as above 1983 [i.e. 1984]; [46]; All my eyes see the visual world of Gerard Manley Hopkins edited by R.K.R. Thornton. 1975; [47]; Vital candle Victorian and modern bearings in Gerard Manley Hopkins proceedings of the international conference, March 1981, ‘Gerard; Manley Hopkins: the poet in his age’ organised jointly by the University of Waterloo and Wilfrid Laurier University edited by John S. North and; Michael D. Moore. c1984; [48]; Gerard Manley Hopkins a critical symposium by the 'Kenyon' critics. 1975; [49]; Gerard Manley Hopkins by Graham Storey. 1984; [50]; Donald Walhout, Send my roots rain a study of religious experience in the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. c1981; [51]; Jerome Bump Gerard Manley Hopkins. c1982; [52]; Michael Sprinker, A counterpoint of dissonance the aesthetics and poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. c1980; [53]; ed., Gerald Roberts Gerard Manley Hopkins the critical heritage. 1987; [54]; Catherine MacKenzie, ed., and notes, Gerard Manley Hopkins, selected poems. 1983; [55]; John Robinson, In extremity a study of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1978; [56]; Daniel A. Harris, Inspirations unbidden the ‘terrible sonnets' of Gerard Manley Hopkins. c1982; [57]; Ellen Eve Frank, Literary architecture essays toward a tradition: Walter Pater, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Marcel Proust, Henry James. 1979; [58]; Norman H. MacKenzie, A reader’s guide to Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1981; [59]; Bernard Bergonzi, Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1977; [60]; Margaret Bottrall, ed., Manley Hopkins, poems a casebook. 1975; [61]; Paddy Kitchen, Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1978; [62]; James Milroy, The language of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1977; [63]; Tom Dunne, Gerard Manley Hopkins, a comprehensive bibliography. 1976; [64]; Seamus Heaney, The fire i' the flint reflections on the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1975; [65]; Margaret R. Ellsberg, Created to praise the language of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1987; [66]; Catherine Phillips, ed., Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1986; [67]; W.H. Gardner, sel. and intro., Poems and prose of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1953; [68]; W.H. Gardner, sel. and intro., Gerard Manley Hopkins poetry and prose. 1976; [69]; Gerard Manley Hopkins' sonnets of desolation an analysis of meaning. c1951; [70]; Robert J. Dilligan and Todd K. Bender, compiled, A concordance to the English poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1986l; [71]; [Thomas Corbishley,]; Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1973; [72]; [Hugh Montefoire,]; Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1972; [73]; F.R. Leavis, Gerard Manley Hopkins reflections after fifty years. 1971; [74]; Franco Marucci, I fogli della Sibilla retorica e medievalismo in Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1981; [75]; Leo Martin van Noppen, [ed.,]; Gerard Manley Hopkins: The wreck of the Deutschland 1980; [76]; J. van Oortmerssen, The idiosyncrasies of the poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins. 1976.

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Notes
Joseph J. Feeney, ‘My Dearest Father, Some unpublished letters of Gerard Manley Hopkins’, Times Literary Supplement (22 Dec. 1995), includes three letters addressed to Jesuits (the only known extant examples), the second to Fr. Matthew Russell, Oct. 10 1886, friend and editor of Irish Monthly, then publishing Latin translations of English nursery rhymes; Hopkins’s advice was sought on the rendering of ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’; the third is a letter to John Henry Newman from the ‘poor University College’, drizzly weak under the successors of Newman (this letter inaccurately printed in 1930); Hopkins. a consummate Englishman, broods about Ireland’s stance in politics and religion; hope[s] that Rome will condemn the Plan of Campaign as it did 20 April 1888; ‘This poor University College, the some-how-or-other mannered wreck of the Catholic University, is afloat and not sinking; rather making a very little way than losing any. There is scarcely any public interest in the University question in this country. Nay, there is none. [...&c.]’ Times Literary Supplement prints Ann Eleanor Hopkin’s portrait sketch of Hopkins. (See TLS, 22 Dec. 1995, p.13-14).

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