This site contains the text and a concordance of the first edition of Hopkins' Poems which was edited by Robert Bridges and first published in 1918.

BIOGRAPHY
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889). Raised in London, Hopkins won a scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied classical literature. He converted to Roman Catholicism in 1866 and two years later entered the Jesuit Novitiate. In 1877, he was ordained as a Jesuit priest and served in missions in London, Liverpool, Oxford, and Glasgow until 1882. From 1884 to his death in 1889, he was professor of Greek at University College, Dublin.

A technically innovative poet, Hopkins saw only three of his poems published during his lifetime, but gained posthumous recognition in 1918 when a friend (the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges) published his complete works. His early poems celebrate the beauty of God's world, but later works reflect his poor health and depression.