Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844 - 1889)
English poet and Jesuit priest. Hopkins studied classics at Balliol College, Oxford. In 1866 he converted to Catholicism and in 1868 he entered the Jesuit novitiate.
In 1874, Hopkins went to St Beuno's College in North Wales to study theology. There he learned Welsh and, encouraged by his superior, he began to write poetry again, after a few attempts as a student.
The death of some Franciscan nuns in a shipwreck, in 1875, moved him to write the long poem The Wreck of the Deutschland. Worth of notice is also his sonnet The Windhover. After being ordained in 1877, Hopkins served in various Jesuit churces in London, Oxford, Liverpool and Glasgow, as well as teaching classics at Stonyhurst College in Lancashire. In 1884, he was appointed professor of Greek literature at University College, Dublin. Hopkins, however, was not happy in Ireland. In the last years of his life, he sank into a bleak depression. He died of typhoid fever, in 1889, and was buried in the Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin.
Hopkins' work was not published in collected form until 1918. In 1930, a second edition was issued and thereafter his work was recognised as among the most original and influential in 20th century poetry.