# Is "Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins" by Gerard Manley Hopkins (ed. Robert Bridges) a First Edition?

> **Quick answer.** A first edition of Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins by Gerard Manley Hopkins (ed. Robert Bridges) (Humphrey Milford, 1918) is identified by: London: Humphrey Milford — the imprint of the London branch of the Oxford University Press — 1918. UK only, and posthumous — the census claim is correct that this appeared in 1918, twenty-nine years after Hopkins's death in 1889 (he died 8 June 1889), with most of the poems printed here for the first time.

**Checklist — a true first has these:**
- London: Humphrey Milford — the imprint of the London branch of the Oxford University Press — 1918
- Full title: "Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Now First Published... Edited with Notes by Robert Bridges"
- First edition limited to 750 copies; [8], 124 pp., octavo
- Half-title present; illustrated with two photogravure portraits by Emery Walker and two double-page facsimiles of Hopkins's manuscripts — a copy lacking the portraits or facsimiles is defective, not a variant
- Bound in publisher's cloth- or linen-backed pale blue paper boards (described by dealers as half raw linen, or quarter cream cloth, over blue boards) with a printed paper label on the spine; largely uncut and frequently found unopened
- A textual/title-page point: Bridges introduced the middle name "Manley" on this title page to distinguish the poet from his nephew
- Publisher imprint reads Humphrey Milford

| | |
|---|---|
| Author | Gerard Manley Hopkins (ed. Robert Bridges) |
| Publisher | Humphrey Milford |
| Year | 1918 |
| True first | UK edition |
| Format | Poetry |
| Key point | London: Humphrey Milford — the imprint of the London branch of the Oxford University Press — 1918 |
| Book-club edition exists? | No |

## Points of issue
London: Humphrey Milford — the imprint of the London branch of the Oxford University Press — 1918. Full title: "Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, Now First Published... Edited with Notes by Robert Bridges". First edition limited to 750 copies; [8], 124 pp., octavo. Half-title present; illustrated with two photogravure portraits by Emery Walker and two double-page facsimiles of Hopkins's manuscripts — a copy lacking the portraits or facsimiles is defective, not a variant. Bound in publisher's cloth- or linen-backed pale blue paper boards (described by dealers as half raw linen, or quarter cream cloth, over blue boards) with a printed paper label on the spine; largely uncut and frequently found unopened. A textual/title-page point: Bridges introduced the middle name "Manley" on this title page to distinguish the poet from his nephew. The 750 copies took roughly ten years to sell out, so the first edition remained in print long after 1918 and no early reprint of it exists.

## Is this the true first?
UK only, and posthumous — the census claim is correct that this appeared in 1918, twenty-nine years after Hopkins's death in 1889 (he died 8 June 1889), with most of the poems printed here for the first time. No separate American first edition of this text was found in the sources consulted; treat any US imprint as later. First-thus trap: the second edition (Humphrey Milford / Oxford, 1930), with a critical introduction and notes by Charles Williams, adds sixteen poems and is the far more commonly encountered book — it is an expanded second edition, not the first. The census assertion that there was "no US edition until 1931" could not be corroborated and is therefore not repeated here.

## Telling it from reprints & book-club editions
No book-club edition is documented. The reprint tells are editorial rather than mechanical: any copy carrying an introduction or notes by Charles Williams (1930 second edition and its impressions) or by a later editor, or containing more poems than the first edition's contents, is not the 1918 first. The 750-copy limitation, the Emery Walker photogravures, the two double-page manuscript facsimiles and the printed spine label together identify the first.

## Source
New Mexico Literacy Project — Is *Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins* by Gerard Manley Hopkins (ed. Robert Bridges) a first edition? https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/first-edition/poems-of-gerard-manley-hopkins
CC BY 4.0. Part of the Canonical First-Edition Points of Issue dataset (https://newmexicoliteracyproject.org/api/first-edition-titles.json). Last reviewed 2026-07-04.