ABSTRACT
1918, pp. 94ff
Bridges, Poet Laureate since 1913, had been planning an edition of Hopkins, with a ‘memoir’, in August 1889, before dropping the idea in favour of his ‘anthology’ policy (see Introduction, pp. 6–9). Admirers of Hopkins continued to beg, publicly and privately, for a full edition (for example, Fr Keating in the Month, August 1909, p. 258), but it was not until 1918 that Bridges judged the moment was right. Seven hundred and fifty copies were printed, and were only finally disposed of just before the publication of the second edition, twelve years later. The book’s price—12s. 6d. a copy, and adversely commented on—contributed to its exclusiveness.
Despite the doubtfulness of Bridges’s critical principles, there has often been much praise for the more technical side of his work: ‘The volume of 1918’, wrote Abbott, some years later, ‘is a masterpiece of editing’ (Letters to Bridges, p. xvii).
