Biography Essay

Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the three or four greatest poets of the Victorian era and one of its most original prose writers. He is regarded by different readers as the greatest Victorian poet of religion, of nature, or of melancholy. However, because his style was so radically different from that of his contemporaries, his best poems were not accepted for publication during his lifetime, and his achievement was not fully recognized until after World War I. Eventually most of his essays, notes, sermons, literary criticism, and letters also appeared in print, and his accomplishments in prose began to attract attention as well.

Born in Stratford, Essex, on 28 July 1844, Hopkins's idiosyncratic creativity was the result of interactions with others, beginning with the members of his family. Hopkins's extended family constituted a social environment that made the commitment of an eldest son to religion, language, and...