Born in Dublin in 1844, Gerard Manley Hopkins attended Oxford University and entered the Roman Catholic Church in 1866. After becoming a Jesuit in 1868, he gave up writing poetry but was inspired to do so again following the sinking of a ship in 1875 carrying five Franciscan nuns, when he wrote The Wreck of the Deutschland.
He was ordained as a priest in 1877 and went on to write Gods Grandeur and The Windhover amongst others. Hopkins never gave permission for his verse to be published and his Poems, edited by his friend Robert Bridges, did not come out in print until 1918, 30 years after his death from typhoid fever.
In 1880 Hopkins spent time as a parish priest in Liverpool, working out of St. Francis Xavier Church in Everton. This church is now a multi denominatonal centre for Liverpool Hope University College. |
