Critical analysis

Publication and response

Hopkins' poetry was not published till 1918, when Hopkins' former friend, Robert Bridges, now Poet Laureate, finally decided that the time was right. He arranged for Oxford University Press to issue an edition of just 750 copies. Few people noticed the volume, and many of those that did still could not make a great deal of it.

It was not till 1930 that a second edition, edited by Charles Williams, appeared. By then, several influential critics and poets had become enthusiastic about the poetry, including I. A. Richards and J. Middleton Murray. There was then an explosion of interest, and some major studies followed, putting Hopkins firmly on the map of English academic study.

Critical analysis of Hopkins can very broadly be divided into two:

1. Close Reading

2. Contextual Reading

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