Gerald Manley Hopkins has been admired as a letter writer for the vividness, sense of humour and honesty with which he expressed his opinions and feelings. Though he died young, his life overlapped some of the great poets of the Victorian era, such as Wordsworth, Tennyson, W.B.Yeats and his life-long friend Robert Bridges. This collection, drawn from the three volumes edited by C.C.Abbott, covers the whole period of Hopkins' life and adds some letters that have recently come to light. They range in date from his schooldays to his final days in Dublin, and include a letter to his German master at Highgate, one to an Irish colleague on the political situation in Ireland and a late letter to his brother Everard on art and his poetry. There are also letters to Oxford friends, to John Henry Newman and Coventry Parmore, as well as many to his family.