Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins

London: Humphrey Milford, 1918. First edition. Original boards, custom box. Very Good. FIRST EDITION, ONE OF ONLY 750 COPIES, OF HOPKINS'S FIRST BOOK. VITA SACKVILLE-WEST'S COPY. "After Hopkins' death, Robert Bridges began to publish a few of Hopkins's most mature poems in anthologies, hoping to prepare the way for wider acceptance of his style. By 1918, Bridges, then poet laureate, judged the time opportune for the first collected edition. It appeared but sold slowly. Not until 1930 was a second edition issued, and thereafter Hopkins' work was recognized as among the most original, powerful, and influential literary accomplishments of his century; it had a marked influence on such leading 20th-century poets as T.S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W.H. Auden, Stephen Spender, and C. Day Lewis" (John Cowie Reid).

Provenance: From the library of Vita Sackville-West, with ownership initials "V.N" (for Vita Nicolson, after her 1913 marriage to Harold Nicolson), and "Long Barn", the country house in Kent owned by the Nicolson's from 1915-1930, written in her hand.

Sackville-West (1892-1962), the prolific author and important member of English literary society, was also the close friend (and likely lover) of Virginia Woolf. Woolf's great novel Orlando was inspired by Sackville-West.

With additional ownership signature of Cormac Rigby. Rigby (1939-2007) was a Catholic priest and long-time radio presenter for the BBC.

London: Humphrey Milford, 1918. Octavo, original half buckram over original blue boards; custom box. Without the legendarily rare dust jacket. Complete with two portraits of Hopkins and two plates of facsimile manuscripts. Wear to paper spine label; boards unusually clean with only very light wear. An outstanding copy of an important and influential book, with noted provenance.