Life as a Jesuit: St. Beuno's and Dublin
In 1866, to his family’s great shock, Hopkins decided to convert to Catholicism. John Henry Newman would receive him into the Catholic church that same year and a couple of years later, in 1868, Hopkins would enter the Society of Jesus. Before doing so, he burnt his poetry in an act of contrition and as a symbol of his new dedication to religious life.
He would not write for seven years, until the wreck of the SS Deutschland when the rector of St. Beuno’s College, in Wales – where Hopkins was undergoing his Jesuit studies – strongly urged him to turn to poetry again.
After graduating from St. Beuno’s, Hopkins took several teaching positions, finally moving to Dublin in 1884, where he became professor of classics at University College Dublin. While in Dublin, his health, never very good to begin with, worsened and he died of typhoid fever in 1889.
For more detailed information on Hopkins’ life, work, faith, poetic and theological influences, visit the Poetry Foundation, The Victorian Web, and the Encyclopedia Britannica.