ISBN: 9780300115079    Publisher: Yale University Press Year of publishing: 2008     Format:  Hardback No of Pages: 448        

This newly edited version of John Henry Newman's "Apologia Pro Vita Sua" sheds new light on Newman's celebrated account of his passage from the Church of England to the Roman Catholic Church, and it repositions his narrative within the broader spiritual crosscurrents of the Victorian age and the transformative religious journeys of other Victorian intellectuals. Frank Turner is the first historian of Victorian thought, religion, and culture to edit Newman's classic autobiographical narrative. Drawing on extensive research in archives and contemporary printed materials, Turner's powerfully revisionist Introduction reevaluates and challenges the historical adequacy of previous interpretations of Newman's life and of the Apologia itself. He further sets Newman's volume into the context of his response to ultramontane assertions of papal authority in the 1860s. In addition to numerous explanatory annotations to the text, the volume includes an Appendix featuring six important Anglican sermons that provide additional insights into Newman's thought during the years recounted in the Apologia.
This edition of the "Apologia Pro Vita Sua" will require scholars of both Newman's life and of Victorian culture to undertake a major reevaluation of the work.
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Frank M. Turner is John Hay Whitney Professor of History and director of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University. He is the author of John Henry Newman: The Challenge to Evangelical Religion and editor of Newman's The Idea of the University, both published by Yale University Press, as well as other studies in Victorian intellectual history.
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