Sketches and Scholarly Studies: Part II, Musical Settings and Sketches
brings together two crucial aspects of Gerard Manley Hopkins's insatiable drive to create: drawing, predominantly (but not exclusively) from the early part of his life, when he had ambitions to be a painter; and music, from the later part of his life, when he found in music suggestions of a new contact with the eternal.
Hopkins grew up in a home that emphasized cultural and artistic accomplishments; his brothers Arthur and Everard were both professional illustrators, and his sister Grace was an accomplished pianist. Limited as the corpus of Hopkins's drawings is—four small sketchbooks and a handful of loose drawings—there is certainly evidence to suggest that he might have been a successful illustrator adhering to Ruskinian principles. This edition reproduces the surviving drawings, with a full introduction and annotations placing them in the context of Hopkins's creative life. His musical compositions are presented in both manuscript facsimiles and new transcriptions, revealing his exploration, in a new mode, of ideas of rhythm, harmony, and counterpoint.