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Gerard Manley Hopkins: A Life
A biography of Gerald Manley Hopkins that explores the poets life and work.
220 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1978
5 people want to read
About the author
Paddy Kitchen
17 books1 follower Patricia Margaret Kitchen (1934 - 2005) was an English novelist, biographer and art critic.
Born in Battersea to middle-class parents, she grew up in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. After rejecting an offer from Cambridge University she moved to London in 1954, working in a Mayfair advertising agency while moonlighting as a hat-check girl in the night club Le Club Contemporain. While working at the Royal College of Art she met the painter Frank Bowling when he was still a student there. They married in 1960 and had one son. Kitchen was one of the women interviewed by Nell Dunn in Talking to Women (1965).
After divorcing Bowling in the late 1960s, Kitchen went on to live with, and later marry, the writer Dulan Barber. Continuing to write novels, she also began writing non-fiction with biographies of Patrick Geddes and Gerard Manley Hopkins. In later life she bought a house in Barnwell, Northamptonshire, which became the subject of her book of the same name.
Born in Battersea to middle-class parents, she grew up in Great Missenden, Buckinghamshire. After rejecting an offer from Cambridge University she moved to London in 1954, working in a Mayfair advertising agency while moonlighting as a hat-check girl in the night club Le Club Contemporain. While working at the Royal College of Art she met the painter Frank Bowling when he was still a student there. They married in 1960 and had one son. Kitchen was one of the women interviewed by Nell Dunn in Talking to Women (1965).
After divorcing Bowling in the late 1960s, Kitchen went on to live with, and later marry, the writer Dulan Barber. Continuing to write novels, she also began writing non-fiction with biographies of Patrick Geddes and Gerard Manley Hopkins. In later life she bought a house in Barnwell, Northamptonshire, which became the subject of her book of the same name.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
January 21, 2016
A much better read than the Mariani biography and Kitchen comes across as simultaneously more sympathetic and more objective. Kitchen's speculation about Hopkins most probably being gay is down to earth and moving. She describes it as a personal rather than an academic biography, and that's how it comes across, and that's a very good thing.
February 17, 2024
Hopkins’ life was too short. He died of typhus in his 40s. This book is quite good on the subject of the Oxford Movement (Cardinal Newman and all that). To my mind, Hopkins is the best lyric poet in English, but a very peculiar one. I wish I could say that this little book has deepened my understanding of his poetics, but it hasn’t really. Does it not speak to me because I’m a bit obtuse, or is it just a rather ordinary book? Other readers will have to decide.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews