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The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Volume IV: Oxford Essays and Notes 1863-1868

Lesley Higgins editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Oxford University Press

Published:5th Oct '06

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The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins: Volume IV: Oxford Essays and Notes 1863-1868 cover

The first of eight volumes of Hopkins's Collected Works to be published, Oxford Essays and Notes presents a remarkable cache of previously unpublished papers, including forty-five essays which Hopkins produced during his undergraduate career at Oxford (1863-1867), only seven of which were reproduced in the 1959 edition of Journals and Papers. Topics range from Platonic philosophy to theories of the imagination, from ancient history to then-contemporary politics and voting rights. Also included are notes from a commonplace book, a remarkable 'dialogue' about aesthetics (featuring a fictionalized John Ruskin figure), and the lecture notes Hopkins prepared in the winter of 1868 while teaching at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Birmingham-writings in which he explores, for the first time, the theories of inscape and instress so central to his poetic practice. The edition is fully annotated and provides a detailed introduction that situates historically Hopkins's academic and creative efforts. The twelve notebooks represent Hopkins's intellectual and aesthetic development while studying with some of the greatest scholars of the era (Benjamin Jowett, Walter Pater, and T. H. Green), as well as the ethical and spiritual anxieties he wrestled with while deciding to convert to Catholicism (John Henry Newman received him into the Church in 1866). Hopkins never wrote to please his tutors or the university professors-he wrote vividly and searchingly in response to the challenges they presented. Whether evaluating Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics, the role of 'neutral' England in the American civil war, or the comparative merits of classical sculpture, his first instinct was always to frame the difficult questions involved and work towards a 'counter' argument.

Most useful to the contemporary 'international readership' is the editors' introduction [...] which sketches the poet's life rapidly and winningly, quoting some of the best lines in the best letters and outlining the difficulties - real and self-inflicted - of Hopkins's career. * Helen Vendler, London Review of Books, *
...the book is a good starting point for what promises, when completed, to be a huge contribution to Hopkins scholarship and a joy to both scholars and general readers. The exhaustive - yet for this reader downright exhilarating, never exhausting - work that Higgins has done... * Barbara Gelpi, English Literature in Translation *
Students of Hopkins' writings will welcome this intellectual juvenilia and will appreciate the high standard of editorial work that has gone into preparing it. * Contemporary Review *
Along with a detailed introduction, an extensive bibliography, and copious notes, the new volume puts a wealth of previously-unpublished material at the disposal of scholars and general readers of Hopkins * Adrian Grafe, Notes and Queries *

ISBN: 9780199285457

Dimensions: 221mm x 145mm x 27mm

Weight: 598g

392 pages