Poems
Gerard Manley Hopkins did not publish any of his poetry during his lifetime. What is more, he was notoriously careless when it came to the safekeeping of his work – even going so far as to burn his own manuscripts upon entering the Society of Jesus in 1868. In consequence, not all of Hopkins’ poems survive today and those that do, do so mainly due to the efforts of friends and correspondent such as Robert Bridges who exerted himself to copy and preserve Hopkin’s poems for posterity.
Hopkin’s destruction of his manuscripts before joining the Jesuits was his way of turning his back on what he saw as the unwarranted excess of pride his abilities as a poet made him feel. Thus, giving up poetry was Hopkin’s way to ensure his devotion was always and completely directed towards God, rather than towards any earthly achievements of his own.
After years of poetic silence, however, the news of the shipwreck of the SS Deutschland on the coast of England on December of 1875 affected Hopkins so much that the rector of St. Beuno’s College urged him to turn back to poetry as a means to cope with his feelings. After a few false starts, Hopkins composed the poem The Wreck of the Deutschland in honor of the memory of the five Franciscan nuns who drowned in the wreck and whose story had so deeply affected the poet.
Hopkins submitted The Wreck of the Deutschland for publication to the Jesuit magazine The Month. However, the poems’ innovative meter and rhythm puzzled the editors who, upon consideration, decided to reject the submission. Thus, Hopkins’ poem remained unpublished until 1918 when Robert Bridges published it in his edition of the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.
After Hopkins' death in 1889, Bridges started working on his friends’ poems with a view to publication. The first edition of the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Bridges, was published in 1918 and consisted of a scant few hundred copies. It would not be until 1930 when interest in Hopkins’ poems would revive with the second edition of the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins.