The three years Gerard Manley Hopkins spent at the Jesuit college at St. Beuno's in the vale of Clwyd were the most important of his authorial life - perhaps his whole life.

He wrote for the first time in seven years - including his classic sonnets - and St Beuno's was his literary testing ground. Here he encountered the Welsh language and its poetry which were to be such a distinctive influence on his work. Such was the impact of St Beuno's on Hopkins that he described leaving it as "summer ending".

This authoritative work explores the St Beuno's experience for Hopkins: how he was effected by the contemplative life there, by the landscape, by the Welsh language. There are chapters on Hopkin's life as a student, on the development of the major poems, and in particular 'The Wreck of the Deutschland', Hopkin's classic statement of belief.

This volume is the first full-length study of Hopkins's rich period in Wales. It includes new research and contributes massively to a fuller understanding of a unique and popular poet.

Norman White is Senior Lecturer in English at University College, Dublin. He is author of Hopkins: A Literary Biography (OUP), the standard work on Hopkins.