Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins; Edited with additional Poems, Notes, and a Biographical Introduction by W.H. Gardner
New York & London: Oxford University Press, 1948. First American edition. 12 mo. (7 5/8 inches tall), original brick red cloth, original dust jacket. Faint bumping to upper corners, mild toning to dust jacket with pencil price inside rear inner flap. A near-fine copy. Item #1086
"TO SUM UP, HOPKINS'S POETRY WAS THE OUTCOME OF A BY NO MEANS UNFORTUNATE TENSION BETWEEN THE FREE PERSONALITY OF THE ARTIST AND THE ACQUIRED CHARACTER OF THE JESUIT PRIEST"
Third collected edition—and first American edition of the Poems of Gerard Manley— revised and enlarged and edited by W.H. Gardner. An excellent copy of an important edition.
The verso of the title page recounts the publication history of the different collected editions of Hopkins: the 1948 third edition succeeded the 1930 second edition (edited by Charles Williams) and the 1918 first edition (edited by Robert Bridges). Edited by W.H. Gardner with his brief Acknowledgments and a lengthy Introduction. Providing a new perspective on the importance of the first two editions, Gardner describes a "Hopkins cult" which then matured with each of the ten impressions of the second edition. "Hopkins has attained the status which gives a psychological or biographical as well as literary importance to all his utterances."
The contents include: Author's Preface, and poems numbered 1-141: Early Poems (1860-75?), Poems (1876-89), Unfinished Poems, Fragments, Light Verse, etc. (1862-89), Translations, Latin & Welsh Poems, &c. (1862-87). The extensive back matter includes Editors' Notes, Preface to Notes, Appendix: The Convent Threshold, by Christina Rossetti, Index of Titles, Index of First Lines. The text includes an illustrated facsimile (from A Vision of the Mermaids) and the dust jacket illustration reproduces an original drawing by Hopkins.
Price: $350.00