The first of eight volumes of Hopkins's Collected Works to be published, Oxford Essays and Notes presents a remarkable cache of previously unpublished papers, including forty-five essays which Hopkins produced during his undergraduate career at Oxford (1863-1867), only seven of which were reproduced in the 1959 edition of Journals and Papers. Topics range from Platonic philosophy to theories of the imagination, from ancient history to then-contemporary politics and voting rights. Also included are notes from a commonplace book, a remarkable "dialogue" about aesthetics (featuring a...

This volume, the latest in Oxford's edition of The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins, presents Hopkins at his most private and self-considering: there are mundane memoranda about neckties to purchase or letters to write, but also exacting revisions of poems. There are entries of quiet rapture, his attention caught by the unexpected sight of a bluebell or "some delicate flying shafted ashes...between which the sun sent straight bright slenderish panes of silver sunbeams down the slant towards the eye." Paintings, sculptures, and works of literature are stringently assessed, his...