Further Reading
Further Reading
The standard late nineteenth century Longman’s edition of all Newman’s published writings is available, free, online at <www.newmanreader.org/>. Except where an alternative edition of works by Newman is specifically indicated in the notes, citations are taken from this edition.
Three-large-scale biographies are standard points of reference. The first ‘authorized’ biography was by Wilfred Ward, son of W. G. Ward, once Newman’s tractarian disciple, eventually one of his most determined Catholic opponents. Ward knew Newman personally, and was the most intelligent and sympathetic contemporary interpreter of his work. Published in 1912 at the height of the Modernist crisis, Ward’s 1000 page book disposes of the Anglican career in 52 pages, plays down the more radical implications of Newman’s thought, and emphasizes his submission to authority: but it is a classic of English ‘life-writing’ and retains its value.
Among modern biographies, two stand out: Ian Ker’s John Henry Newman, (Oxford, 1990) is exhaustively based on the Letters and Diaries and Newman’s published writings and provides almost day-by-day coverage. Sheridan Gilley’s Newman and His Age (London, 1990) is a graceful account by a historian who is himself a convert to Catholicism from High-Church Anglicanism, with a strong literary sensibility.
Of the crop of shorter biographies elicited by Newman’s beatification, easily the best is John Cornwell’s consciously provocative Newman’s Unquiet Grave (London, 2010). David Newsome’s The Convert Cardinals (London, 1993) is a masterly and on the whole balanced double-biography of Newman and his bete noire, Manning. Frank Turner’s John Henry Newman: the challenge to Evangelical Religion (New Haven and London, 2002) was a ground-breaking study of the importance of Newman’s rejection of Evangelicalism as a key to his Anglican years, but Turner’s manifest loathing for the younger Newman distorts his reading of evidence and makes his book the case for the prosecution rather than a biography. Owen Chadwick’s small volume in the Past Masters series, Newman (Oxford, 1983), is full of insight. The best short introduction to Newman’s theology remains Stephen Dessain’s John Henry Newman (London, 1966): a more recent survey, arranged by theme, is Avery Dulles, Newman (London, 2003).
There are many anthologies of Newman’s writings: among the best are Vincent Fehrer Blehl (editor), The Essential Newman (New York, 1963) and Ian Ker (editor), The Genius of John Henry Newman: selections from his writing (Oxford, 2012).
Newman was the most prolific and arguably the best letter-writer of Victorian England: his collected Letters and Diaries have been published by Oxford University Press in thirty-two volumes (1961–2010) under the general editorship of Fr Stephen Dessain. The fullest single-volume selection is by Roderick Strange, John Henry Newman, a portrait in letters (Oxford, 2015), with valuable introductions providing a biographical overview. The delightful shorter selection by Joyce Sugg, A Packet of Letters: Selections from the correspondence of John Henry Newman (Oxford, 1993), remains valuable.
There is a Newman industry generating acres of monographs and essays, of very variable quality, on all aspects of his work. The most comprehensive recent collection, with useful essays on most of the topics covered in this book, is Frederick Aquino and Benjamin King (editors), The Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman (Oxford, 2018). The best of many older collections is Ian Ker and Alan G. I. Hill (editors), Newman after a Hundred Years (Oxford, 1990): John Coulson and A. M. Allchin, (editors), The Rediscovery of Newman: an Oxford Symposium (London, 1967), was a pioneering ecumenical venture.
Chapter 1
For the general 19th century background, Owen Chadwick, The Victorian Church (2 vols, London, 1966, 1970): on Tractarianism, Peter Nockles, The Oxford Movement in Context: Anglican High Churchmanship 1760–1857 (Cambridge, 1994), displaced all earlier interpretations. But R. W. Church’s The Oxford Movement: Twelve Years 1833–1845 (London 1891) remains a classic account by a participant: it is best read in the edition with an introduction by Geoffrey Best (Oxford, 1970). For the impact of Tractarianism in the parishes, G. Herring, The Oxford Movement in Practice (Oxford, 2016). On the Catholic Church Newman joined, Edward Norman, The English Catholic Church in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1984) and Mary Heimann, Catholic Devotion in Victorian England (Oxford, 1995).
Chapter 2
On Newman’s engagement with the Fathers of the early church:
Benjamin King, Newman and the Alexandrian Fathers (Oxford, 2009): Stephen Thomas, Newman and Heresy, the Anglican Years (Cambridge, 1991): Roderick Strange, Newman and the Gospel of Christ (Oxford, 1981), and Rowan Williams’ groundbreaking essay ‘Newman’s Arians and the Question of Method in Doctrinal History’ in Ker and Hill, Newman after a Hundred Years.
On the Development of Doctrine, Owen Chadwick, From Bossuet to Newman (Cambridge, 1987): Nicholas Lash, Newman on Development: the Search for an Explanation in History (Sheperdstown, WV, 1975): Aidan Nicholas, From Newman to Congar: the Idea of Doctrinal Development from the Victorians to the Second Vatican Council (Edinburgh, 1990).
Chapter 3
The literature on Newman’s philosophical work is mostly technical. But Thomas Vargish’s study, Newman: the Contemplation of Mind (Oxford, 1970) is approachable, as are the essays by Basil Mitchell on ‘Newman as a Philosopher’ in Ker and Hill, Newman after a Hundred Years, Anthony Kenny’s ‘Newman as a Philosopher of Religion’, in David Brown (editor), Newman, A Man for Our Time (London, 1990): and Gerard Hughes, ‘Conscience’ in Ian Ker and Terence Merrigan, The Cambridge Companion to John Henry Newman (Cambridge, 2009).
Chapter 11 ‘The Logic of the heart’, and Chapter 12 ‘Newman and Empiricism’ of J. M. Cameron’s The Night Battle (London, 1962), are full of insight. Among older studies, A. J. Boekraad, The Personal Conquest of Truth According to J. H. Newman (Louvain, 1955), retains its value, but is scarce and hard to get hold of.
Chapter 4
For two accessible general introductions to Newman’s thought, somewhat contrasting in emphasis, Avery Dulles, John Henry Newman (London 2002), and Roderick Strange, John Henry Newman, a Mind Alive (London 2008). For the Infallibility crisis, in addition to the coverage in the biographies by Ward, Ker and Gilley, John R. Page’s What will Dr Newman Do? John Henry Newman and Papal Infallibility 1865–75 (Collegeville, 1994). For Newman’s ecclesiology, the editor’s introduction in John Coulson (editor), On Consulting the Faithful in Matters of Doctrine (Lanham, 1961): and John Coulson, Newman and the Common Tradition (Oxford, 1970). More cautious and qualified treatment in the essays by Avery Dulles and Francis Sullivan in Ker and Hill, Newman after a Hundred Years. For a fine study of the theology of Newman’s opposite, Cardinal Manning, James Pereiro, Cardinal Manning, from Anglican Archdeacon to Council Father at Vatican 1 (Leominster, 2008).
Chapter 5
There is no single satisfactory book on Newman as a literary figure. The first seven essays in Ker and Hill, Newman after a Hundred Years, consider various aspects of his writing. On the sermons, see the essays in that collection by Eric Griffiths, and by Eamon Duffy in Aquino and King, Handbook: there is a good selection of the sermons by Ian Ker, John Henry Newman, Selected Sermons (New York, 1994). All the Parochial and Plain Sermons have been republished in a handsome and handy single volume by Ignatius Press (San Francisco, 1997). The best study of Newman’s educational ideals, and of The Idea of a University, remains A. Dwight Culler, The Imperial Intellect (New Haven and London, 1955): Colin Barr’s Paul Cullen, John Henry Newman and the Catholic University of Ireland 1845–1865 (Leominster, 2003) replaces all previous studies of the historical context. David de Laura, Hebrew and Hellene in Victorian England: Newman, Arnold and Pater (University of Texas, 1969) is an illuminating comparative study. The standard scholarly edition of the Apologia is edited by Martin Svaglic (Oxford, 1967). There is a convenient paperback from Penguin (Harmondsworth, 1994) edited by Ian Ker. Some background is provided in Linda Peterson, Victorian Autobiography (London, 1986).
Chapter 6
For the reception of Newman’s thought and his continuing legacy, see the section ‘Ongoing Significance’ in Aquino and King, Handbook (pp. 495–596) and Aquino and King (editors), Receptions of Newman (Oxford, 2015). Important older treatments in the essays by B. D. Dupuy, Werner Becker, H. Francis Davis, and B. C. Butler in Coulson and Allchin, The Rediscovery of Newman, pp. 147–226, and the essay by Nicholas Lash in Ker and Hill, Newman After a Hundred Years, pp. 447–464. On the complicated issue of Newman’s work on the doctrine of Justification, in addition to the relevant sections of the surveys by Dulles and Strange, Henry Chadwick, ‘The Lectures on Justification’, in I. Ker and A. Hill, (eds), Newman After a Hundred Years: Alister McGrath, ‘Newman on Justification, an Anglican Evangelical Evaluation’, in T. Merrigan and I. Ker (eds), Newman and the Word (Leuven, 2000), pp. 91–107: David Newsome, ‘Justification and Sanctification: Newman and the Evangelicals’, Journal of Theological Studies, vol. 15 (1964), pp. 32–53 and the same author’s ‘The Evangelical sources of Newman’s power’, in John Coulson and D. Allchin (eds), The Rediscovery of Newman: Thomas L. Sheridan, ‘Newman and Luther on Justification’, Journal of Ecumenical Studies, vol. 38 (2001), pp. 217–45: for a more hostile critique, Joseph S. O’Leary, ‘Impeded Witness: Newman against Luther on Justification’, in David Nicholls and Fergus Kerr, John Henry Newman, Reason, Rhetoric and Romanticism (Bristol, 1991), pp. 153–93.