Gerard Manley Hopkins

Gerard Manley Hopkins SJ (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest. After his death, his poetry made him very famous.

Hopkins was born in Stratford, Essex near London, England. His family were Anglicans. 

When he was young, Hopkins liked being in the natural world. He liked music and drawing. When he was ten years old, he was sent to board at Highgate School where he studied from 1854 to 1863. Then he studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford from 1863 to 1867.

At Oxford he became friends with Robert Bridges. Bridges later became the Poet Laureate of the United Kingdom. Hopkins loved the poetry of Christina Rossetti. She became one of his great influences. They met in 1864.

Hopkins had strong religious feelings. In July 1886, he decided to become a Roman Catholic. That September he met the leader of the Oxford converts, John Henry Newman. Newman received him into the Roman Catholic Church on 21 October 1866.

In 1868 Hopkins decided to join a Catholic religious group. He thought poetry got in the way of religion. He burned his poetry. He stopped writing it for seven years. He also wanted to become a Jesuit priest. He joined the Jesuits and made his first vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience on 8 September 1870.

During his studies, his religious superior asked him to write a poem about the sinking of a German ship in a storm. So in 1875 he started to write poetry again. He wrote a long poem called "The Wreck of the Deutschland". It was about a disaster in which five Franciscan nuns died among many who were on the ship. They were leaving Germany because of strong laws against Catholics. 

In 1877 he wrote "God's Grandeur" and other sonnets. He finished a famous poem, "The Windhover," only a few months before his ordination in 1877. 

In October 1877, a month after his ordination, Hopkins became a minister and teacher at Mount St Mary's College near Sheffield. In 1878 he became an assistant priest at a Jesuit church in London. This was followed by work in Oxford, Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow. 

In 1884 he became a professor of Greek and Latin at University College Dublin.

After several years of ill health, Hopkins died of typhoid fever in 1889 at the age of 44.

After Hopkins' death, his friend Robert Bridges worked to make his poetry better known. The poems used language in strong and unusual ways. Hopkins became known as one of the most important poets of the Victorian period.

References

Other websites
"The Wreck of the Deutschland"
"God's Grandeur"
"Pied Beauty"
"The Windhover"

Category:1844 births
Category:1889 deaths
Category:English poets
Category:English Christian writers
Category:People from the London Borough of Newham