Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Very Private Life by Robert Bernard Martin (PDF)

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Will surely rank as one of the foremost literary biographies of our time.’John Carey, Sunday Times In his lifetime Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889) published just a single poem – only a few close friends were aware he wrote. Much of his work was burnt by fellow Jesuits on his death. And yet Hopkins is today a huge figure in English literature. Homosexual but terribly repressed, he channeled his emotions toward nature and God, with profound results. Princeton emeritus professor Martin, the only biographer to have unrestricted use of Hopkins’ private papers, tells this extraordinary story from Hopkins’ early life and studies at Oxford, through his tortuous conversion from Anglicanism to Catholicism, to his struggle in later years to retain his very sanity. ‘In Martin, the unhappy and tormented genius has found the most sympathetic and intelligent interpreter… [The book] goes to the heart of Hopkins, and plants him firmly before us as a Victorian, and a great one.’ Allan Massie, Sunday Telegraph ‘Martin follows Hopkins through his toils with sympathy and a great unshowy command of the facts. In this magnificently solicitous biography he has re-established the contours of the story definitively and made the homosexual drama integral to the better-known drama of conversion and poetics.’ Seamus Heaney, Independent on Sunday ‘The triumph of this learned, scrupulously detailed and persuasive biography is that it brings the reader as near as it is perhaps possible to come to living Hopkins’ life, to sensing the mysterious crushing pressures that were for him intimately bound up with the richness and complexity of his writing.’Hilary Spurling, Daily Telegraph

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Hopkins’ life is a clear illustration that religion doesn’t deliver what it promises to those who take it too seriously. The world he inhabited seems like something that vanished centuries ago. I wish I could have enjoyed this book more, but it brought back too many painful memories of my own experiences as a Jesuit.

⭐Nicely packaged and book is in very good condition; author puts emphasis on Hopkins’ homosexuality, as others ignore it!

⭐Of the three books I have read on Hopkins recently, this is the most scholarly and contains much of his poetry. I am enjoying it very much.

⭐Hopkins is one of my favorite poets. I am biased, though, because I, too, had been a Jesuit priest in the earlier years of my life. Given that background, I approached this biography with an even more critical eye.Martin has given Hopkins a worthy biography. He explores his life within the Catholic Church, the Jesuits and ministry with an acute and sensitive eye. Hopkins’ poetry is not the easiest to read or understand and his life is even more difficult to make sense of. Martin allows Hopkins to be not just a priest or poet, but a man in full, mature complexity. This is the definitive biography for some time to come.

⭐Anyone who responds to the poetry of G.M.Hopkins, one of England’s greatest poets, becomes aware that he was a man of quite exceptional sensitivity and integrity. In Robert Bernard Martin, Hopkins has found a biographer he deserves: Martin writes with remarkable insight into his unusual subject. His book is characterised by such imaginative sympathy, that the man behind the poetry becomes almost a sensed presence. The author of this wonderful biography offers a fascinating and judicious assessment of Hopkins’ state of mind during the varied and painful crises of his life. The book has such a lightness of touch and fluency of expression that it is a pleasure to read – and there is humour too. During his lifetime Hopkins received no public recognition whatever. Like his contemporary van Gogh (another artist who helps us to see the world in a new way!) Hopkins went almost unappreciated. In today’s celebrity-saturated culture this might almost be taken as a mark of moral purity. But creative artists need, if not fame, at least some appreciation. Hopkins (and van Gogh) were granted almost none. In constructing a biography of a poet like Hopkins, attention to the human qualities of the subject is of first importance, and this is very much in evidence here; Martin’s work is also a balanced appraisal of the circumstantial facts, and a pointed and skilful analysis of Hopkins’ art. A marvellous book, unforgettable.

⭐Hopkins is a fascinating poet and this interesting biography throws much light on his complex and troubled life.

⭐An incredibly complex subject. Martin is sympathetic but not uncritical of individuals , Victorian society and especially the squalid conditions endured by Catholic priests. Hopkins need not have died so young.

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