1844 Born July 28 to Manley and Catherine (Smith ) Hopkins, in Stratford, Essex.
1852 Family moves to Hampstead.
1854-63 At Cholmondeley [pronounced Chumly] Grammar School, Highgate.
1863 Enters Balliol College, Oxford.
1866 Received by J.H. Newman into the (Roman) Catholic Church.
1867 Graduates with a "double-first"; considered the "star of Balliol."
1868 Enters the Jesuit Novitiate and burns his early poems.
1872 Discovers the writings of Duns Scotus.
1873-74 Learning Welsh; writes extensive notes on prosody.
1875 The wreck of the Deutschland inspires him to start writing again.
1877 Ordained as a Jesuit priest; begins serving as parish assistant.
1879 Curate at Bedford Leigh, near Manchester, then sent to Liverpool to work among Irish immigrants.
1881 Assistant in a Glasgow parish; ten-month retreat in London.
1882 Becomes teacher of classics at Stonyhurst College.
1884 Appointed Fellow of University College, Dublin, and examiner in Greek for the Royal University of Ireland.
1884-89 Writing the "terrible" sonnets.
1886 Meets W.B. Yeats; neither particularly impressed by the other.
1889 Dies June 8 of typhoid fever.
1918 The Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, notes and introduction by Robert Bridges, then Poet Laureate.
Last modified 1988