279. Hopkins (Gerard Manley) Poems, edited by Robert Bridges, first edition, [one of 750 copies], 2 portraits, 1 double-page facsimile, title clipped at upper & lower edge above typographical border, repair to head of preface to notes, last f. of notes glued down onto rear cover with last p. unreadable, lacking front free endpaper, owner’s small signature on front pastedown, original cloth-backed boards, light soiling, split near head of spine and loss to most of spine label, 8vo, 1918.
est. £200 – £300
“Robert Bridges…on whom the poet had relied to keep, treasure, and conceivably publish the poems after Hopkins's death, believed that they must be printed, and was soon planning an edition with a short memoir. Delay was caused by his respect for the private nature of the letters, by his feeling that Hopkins's melancholia should not be publicly exposed, and by fear that the public would not understand the peculiarities of the verse. He gradually introduced small groups of the poems into anthologies, but it was not until 1916 that he received the public encouragement for which he was waiting. The sensitive, handsome, and almost complete small edition, edited and largely designed by Bridges, was published at the end of 1918.” (DNB)