This chapter examines the extent to which Hopkins’s poetry was shaped by his knowledge of and engagement with nineteenth-century ‘Anglo-Saxonism’ – that is, the idea that the Anglo-Saxon period played a uniquely important part in the intellectual, cultural, and political formation of the English people. This resulted, amongst other things, in a reassessment of the value of Anglo-Saxon poetry, a sustained attempt to understand its distinctive linguistic devices and alliterative verse forms, and a desire to impart something of its native energy and vigour to contemporary verse. Hopkins appears to have seen some of the idiosyncratic formal and linguistic features of his own poetry as part of this revival; the chapter traces some of the affinities and asymmetries between his work and the contemporary understanding of Anglo-Saxon verse, and concludes by suggesting areas for future research on this topic.

This chapter shows how Hopkins’s letters to his family members, fellow poets, and friends allow readers access to two crucial aspects of the poet’s unusual career. In the first place, we witness the development of those personal relationships that gave him scope for practising and performing his craft; relationships which were both crucial and conflicted for a writer who firmly held religious life to be paramount. In the second instance, these letters feature Hopkins’s clearest explanations of his aesthetic principles, as well as their correlation with his spiritual beliefs.