Hopkins (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Norman White
- First Published: 1992
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: Primarily 1844-1889; but, briefly, afterward
- Setting: England, Wales, and Ireland
- Principal Characters: Gerard Manley Hopkins, Kate Hopkins (Née Smith), Manley Hopkins, Robert Bridges
- Genres: Criticism, Nonfiction, Diary, Letters, Biography
- Subjects: Homosexuality or homosexuals, Literature, Poetry or poets, England or English people, Catholics or Catholic Church, Ireland or Irish people, Theology, Aesthetics, Jesuits, Wales or Welsh people, Victorian era or Victorianism
- Locales: England, Ireland, Wales
The poetry of Gerard Manley Hopkins presents enormous challenges to the reader; its complex rhythms and odd linguistic constructions often defy easy interpretation. Similarly, the curious, even perverse, life of Hopkins can shock and confuse, even as it compels. Norman White has accumulated an impressive array of factual materials and provides revealing selections from diaries and letters in order to make sense of a peculiar, tragic life story. Although he admits in his preface that Hopkins’ was a life without a coherent pattern, he does illuminate many of its mysteries. White’s...
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