Gerard Manley Hopkins's extant religious prose, compiled in its entirety for the first time, and with material not seen since Hopkins's death, is of value to theologians, church historians, and Victorianists scholars and critics. The Sermons and Spiritual Writings of Gerard Manley Hopkins features the thirty-two sermons and fragments Hopkins preached between the 1870s and 1880s, personal meditations on biblical passages and religious occasions, undergraduate notes on Henry Parry Liddon's Sunday evening lectures, marginalia in the authorized version of the Bible, vows made in the Society of Jesus, private meditations written during his Dublin years, and the Commentary on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. The sermons represent the only texts Hopkins prepared for public performance, and show his creative engagement with classical oratory, patristic scholarship, pastoral theology, and the social and religious controversies of his day. The spiritual writings, stylistically similar to his diary entries, reveal the spiritual consolations and inner struggles of a Victorian Jesuit with remarkable sensibilities. A sometimes vexed and invariably complex spiritual life emerges from the volume, one that encompassed both the 'grandeur of God' and the 'forepangs' of suffering. The new introductions and notes provide expanded historical and theological commentary. The edition also includes new annotations, complete translations of Latin and Greek texts, definitions of Jesuit customs and terminology, a biographical register, and a selected bibliography of key studies on Hopkins sermons, religious writings, and spirituality.
