Gerard Manley Hopkins

HOPKINS, Gerard Manley. b. Stratford, London, 28 July 1844; d. Dublin, 8 June 1889. From Stratford, East London, his family moved to Hampstead in 1852. Gerard was educated at Highgate School, followed by Balliol College, Oxford (BA 1867). In the face of anguished opposition from his Anglican parents, he became a Roman Catholic in 1866, being received into the church by John Henry Newman*, and teaching for a short period at Newman’s Oratory at Birmingham. He entered the Jesuit order in 1868 (‘The Benedictines would not have suited you’, wrote Newman, noting Hopkins’s ascetic temperament), and studied at Manresa House, Roehampton, St Mary’s Hall, Stonyhurst, Lancashire, and St Beuno’s...