A Scanty Plot of Ground:
Sonnets of Donne and Hopkins

A selection of sonnets by two of the greatest proponents of the form in English

ESTIMATED PUBLICATION DATE:
early 2026

A further venture into the canon of English poetry, A Scanty Plot of Ground, will comprise a selection of sonnets by two of the greatest proponents of the form in English: John Donne (?1572-1631) and Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-89). Donne will be represented by a selection from his sequence of ‘Holy Sonnets’ – of which the best known is ‘Death be not proud’. Hopkins’ selection will include about twenty sonnets ranging from ‘The Windhover’ and ‘Felix Randall’ to his six so-called ‘Terrible Sonnets’ and the ‘curtal’ sonnet ‘Pied Beauty’.

Those who know anything about these two men will see the connections, and the reason for our including them together in one book: both were priests – Donne an Anglican, and Dean of St Paul’s in London; Hopkins a Jesuit, ordained late in his brief life, a curate and a teacher. Both were troubled by a sense of conflict between their love of beauty and its pleasures and the denial required by their vocations. Both wrote poems celebrating life in its fullest sense, but published few poems during their lifetime. Donne wrote openly witty, erotic, and sensual love poems which nevertheless made metaphorical connections to the divine, as well as many ‘divine poems’ such as the ‘Holy Sonnets’ on matters of the spirit. His poems have been praised and cherished ever since their first appearances, collected in many editions after his death. Hopkins wrote poems in praise of God couched in some of the most exalted and sensual celebrations of nature’s beauty in the language, but destroyed his early work and published only a very few poems during his lifetime, seeming to have felt that they conflicted with the humility required of the Jesuit life. His poems first appeared in a collection edited (some would say ‘over-edited’) by his friend, the poet Robert Bridges, in 1918. The book had a stunning impact, and later editions by editors with more reference to Hopkins’ manuscripts and related writings have reconfirmed and deepened that effect. Dead for thirty years when the poems appeared, Hopkins was hailed as the first great modernist in English poetry. His influence has been profound.

The combined selections of their sonnets will provide revealing portraits of both poets, and at the same time will offer an opportunity to consider the sonnet itself as a central form in poetry in English. The book will include biographical notes and an afterword on the history of the sonnet, its formal functions, and a discussion of its importance.

Abigail Rorer is the creator of her own exquisite editions from her Lone Oak Press, as well as being the subject of Endgrain Editions Two, illustrator of our edition of Amours de Voyage, and contributor to The Marriage of True Minds. To our delight, Abbie has agreed to engrave portraits of Donne and Hopkins for A Scanty Plot of Ground, as well as a new version of our press device to suit the book. We hope for publication either late in 2025 or early 2026, since this book requires considerable preliminary editorial work, including notably the writing of the Afterword on the sonnet and the biographical notes.