Quoted fully from Phillips 1986: xxxvii–xxxviii; 1998: xvii–xix.

(Titles given in italics represent poems which are studied in this paper and are linked to their respective commentaries. Titles given in Roman type are linked to external electronic versions of the poems in Bartleby, with the exception of The Windhover, which is linked to the commentary in the First Paper of the course).

1844

28 July, born at Stratford, Essex. Gerard was the first of eight children. His father, Manley Hopkins, was a marine adjuster and Consul-General (Ambassador) for Hawaii in London.

1854-62

Gerard attends Highgate School. He does well academically, winning five prizes, among them the School Poetry Prize for ‘The Escorial’ (1860), the Governors’ Gold Medal for Latin Verse, and a school Exhibition.

1862

Wins an exhibition to Balliol College, Oxford.

1863

April, enters Balliol.

1866

July, decides to join Catholic Church.

21 October, received by Newman into the Catholic communion.

1867

June, graduates with first-class degree.

September—April 1868, teaches at the Oratory, Birmingham.

1868

2 May, decides to become a priest, although unsure whether to join the Benedictines or the Jesuits.

11 May, burns copies of his poems, indicating his new, vocational goal.

3 July—1 August, walking holiday in Switzerland with Edward Bond.

7 September, enters the Jesuit novitiate at Manresa House, Roehampton (London).

1870

9 September, begins three years of philosophy at St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst, Lancashire.

1872

Reads the Oxford Commentary of Duns Scotus on the Sentences of Peter Lombard.

1873

From September teaches rhetoric at Roehampton.

1874

August, begins three years of theology at St Beuno’s, Wales.

1875

December, begins to write ‘The Wreck of the Deutschland’.

1876

Writes ‘Silver Jubilee’, ‘Ad Episcopum’, ‘Cywydd’, and ‘Penmaen Pool’.

1877

February—September, writes ‘God’s Grandeur’, ‘The Starlight Night’, ‘As kingfishers catch fire’, ‘Spring’, ‘The Sea and the Skylark’, ‘In the Valley of the Elwy’, ‘The Windhover’, ‘Pied Beauty’, ‘Hurrahing in Harvest’, and ‘The Lantern out of Doors’.

23 September, ordained.

October, sent to Mount St Mary’s College, Chesterfield, where a classical scholar was required as teacher.

1878

April, moved to Stonyhurst to prepare students for the University of London examinations. ‘The Loss of the Eurydice’ and ‘The May Magnificat’ written here.

July—November, acting curate at Mount Street, London.

December, becomes curate at St Aloysius’ church, Oxford.

1879

February—October, writes nine complete poems (‘Duns Scotus’s Oxford’, ‘Binsey Poplars’, ‘Henry Purcell’, ‘The Candle Indoors’, ‘The Handsome Heart’, ‘The Bugler’s First Communion’, ‘Andromeda’, ‘Morning, Midday, and Evening Sacrifice’, and ‘Peace’) and a number of fragments, and begins to compose music.

October—December, curate at St Joseph’s, Bedford Leigh, where he writes ‘At the Wedding March’.

30 December, becomes Select Preacher at St Francis Xavier’s, Liverpool.

1880

Writes ‘Felix Randal’ and ‘Spring and Fall’.

1881

 September, becomes assistant in Glasgow. Visits Loch Lomond and there writes ‘Inversnaid’.

October, starts tertianship at Roehampton; composes no extant poetry during the year but writes notes towards a commentary on the Spiritual Exercises.

1882

September, sent to Stonyhurst College to teach classics. There he completes ‘The Leaden Echo and the Golden Echo’ and writes ‘Ribblesdale’.

1883

Bridges begins his second collection of Hopkins’s poems (MS B).

Hopkins writes ‘The Blessed Virgin compared to the Air we Breathe’.

August, meets Coventry Patmore.

1884

February, moves to Dublin as Fellow in Classics and Professor of Greek and Latin Literature at the newly formed University College. His duties at first were as examiner in Greek.

October—April 1885, writes most of the extant passages of “St. Winefred’s Well“.

1885

May well have written most of the poems called ‘The Sonnets of Desolation’ as well as ‘To what serves Mortal Beauty?’, ‘The Soldier’, ‘To his Watch’, and ‘The times are nightfall’.

1886

May, meets Bridges while on holiday in England.

Completes ‘Spelt from Sibyl’s Leaves’, writes ‘On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People’, translates ‘Songs from Shakespeare’.

1887

August, holiday in England.

Writes ‘Harry Ploughman’, ‘Tom’s Garland’, and, perhaps, ‘Ashboughs’.

1888

Begins ‘Epithalamion’, writes ‘That Nature is a Heraclitean Fire…’, ‘What shall I do for the land that bred me’, and ‘St. Alphonsus Rodriguez’.

August, holiday in Scotland.

1889

January, retreat at Tullabeg. Writes ‘Thou art indeed just, Lord’, ‘The shepherd’s brow’, and ‘To R. B.’.

8 June, dies of typhoid; buried at Glasnevin, Dublin.

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