Author: HAWKER (Robert Stephen)
Title: Ecclesia: A Volume of Poems, by the Rev. R. S. Hawker, M. A.
Description: Oxford: Printed by T. Combe...; Sold by J. G. and J. Rivington...[inter alia], 1840 FIRST EDITION. Large 8vo, 205 x 133 mms., pp. 144, contemporary boards, later reback; binding slightly worn, but a very good copy, with the bookplate of Francis Frederick Fox on the front paste-down end-paper, and an ink inscription on the recto of the front free end-paper, "Ex libris/ P. H. Bossier/ Coll: Exon:/ Oct 19th/ 1843." Hawker (1803 - 1875) was an Anglican priest, noted for his determination to give Christian burials to seaman who died in shipwrecks. He had two interesting marriages: at the age of 19, he married Charlotte Eliza I'ans, who was 41. She died in 1863, and in the following year he married Pauline Kuczynski, aged 20, by whom he had three daughters, Morwenna Pauline Hawker, Rosalind Hawker and Juliot Hawker. Ecclesia was noticed in The Churchman's Monthly Review for 1841: "This very handsome volume is merely a specimen, and that perhaps a favourable one, of the numerous imitators of Mr. Keble's Christian Year. We are induced to noticed it on two grounds; - first, that it is rather above the ordinary run of such productions; and then, that it exhibits a clearer proof than most others, of the evil tendency of this style of thinking and writing." George Sainsbury said of his longest poem, The Quest of the Snagrall that as his "longest and most ambitious poem [it]perhaps just misses complete success." Andrew Landale Drummond, "Parson Hawker of Morwenstow," in Historical Magazine of the Protestant Episcopal Church(June, 1964),

Keywords: poetry religion literature


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