Includes bibliographical references and index.

Gerard Manley Hopkins was not only one of the most gifted Victorian poets, he was a compelling diarist who used his journals for everything from daily to-do lists to the most intimate spiritual self-assessments. This volume represents Hopkins as a man of extremes, both emotionally and psychologically. There are mundane memoranda about neckties to purchase or letters to write, but also exacting revisions of poems. There are entries of quiet rapture, his attentioncaught by the beauty of the natural world. Paintings, sculptures, and works of literature are stringently assessed, his aesthetic principles freely exercised. There are also nightmares relived;undergraduate 'sins' unsparingly recorded; 'signs' of heavenly mercy carefully noted. This is the first unexpurgated edition of all extant diaries. The entries extend from September 1863, during his second term at Oxford, until February 1875, while studying theology as a Jesuit in his beloved Wales, and from February 1884 until July 1885, while Hopkins was living at a 'third remove' in Dublin.

Sketches and Scholarly Studies: Part II, Musical Settings and Sketches brings together two crucial aspects of Gerard Manley Hopkins's insatiable drive to create: drawing, predominantly (but not exclusively) from the early part of his life, when he had ambitions to be a painter; and music, from the later part of his life, when he found in music suggestions of a new contact with the eternal. Hopkins grew up in a home that emphasized cultural and artistic accomplishments; his brothers Arthur and Everard were both professional illustrators, and his sister Grace was an accomplished pianist. Limited as the corpus of Hopkins's drawings is--four small sketchbooks and a handful of loose drawings--there is certainly evidence to suggest that he might have been a successful illustrator adhering to Ruskinian principles. This edition reproduces the surviving drawings, with a full introduction and annotations placing them in the context of Hopkins's creative life. His musical compositions are presented in both manuscript facsimiles and new transcriptions, revealing his exploration, in a new mode, of ideas of rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint.

An insightful and inspirational biography of the heroic and spiritual poet. Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844?1889) may well have been the most original and innovative poet writing in the English language during the nineteenth century. Yet his story of personal struggle, doubt, intense introspection, and inward heroism has never been told fully. As a Jesuit priest, Hopkins?s descent into loneliness and despair and his subsequent recovery are a remarkable and inspiring spiritual journey that will speak to many readers, regardless of their faith or philosophies. Paul Mariani, an award-winning poet himself and author of a number of biographies of literary figures, brilliantly integrates Hopkins?s spiritual life and his literary life to create a rich and compelling portrait of a man whose work and life continue to speak to readers a century after his death.

Through a study of the writings and intellectual development of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Dr. Philip Ballinger demonstrates why poetry is, as Hans Urs von Balthasar stated, "the absolutely appropriate theological language". While circling Hopkins' visions of the nature of sensual experience, intuitive cognition, and the function of language, Ballinger focuses upon the sacramental intention of the Victorian Jesuit's poetry. Underlying Hopkins' poetry is a vision of reality as divinely revelatory or 'self-expressive'. For Hopkins, this revelatory character of creation is determined by the incarnation, and beauty, in fact, is a word for 'Christic self-expressiveness'.