When Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins was published in 1918, readers were advised to brace themselves. The volume came with a prefatory disclaimer from its editor, Robert Bridges, whose voice carried a doubly compelling authority, as the poet’s closest literary confidante as well as the nation’s poet laureate. With the starchy disapproval of the schoolmaster, Bridges regretted to report ‘Definite’ and ‘bad’ ‘faults of style’; notably, a tendency to ‘oddity and obscurity’.