John Henry Newman

Newman was already a recognised spiritual leader of over thirty year's standing, but not yet a Cardinal, when in 1864 he wrote the Apologia. He was London born, and he had, as many Londoners have had, a foreign strain in him. His father came of Dutch stock; his mother was a Fourdrinier, daughter of an old French Huguenot family settled in this country. The date of his birth, 21st of February 1801, relates him to many famous contemporaries, from Heine to Renan, from Carlyle to Pusey. Sent to school at Ealing

Even before the publication of his masterwork, John Henry Newman had been regarded as one of the most important religious thinkers on the 19th Century. His decision in 1845 to leave his Anglicanism behind and convert to the Roman Catholic faith was one that rocked the Victorian establishment at a time when virulent anti-Catholic feeling ran high. It was in response to one particularly vicious attack – by the Reverend Charles Kingsley – that Newman wrote his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. A humane and vivid account of the development of his ideas and his faith and a passionate defence of both, the book remains a landmark work of Victorian literature and autobiography and one that continues to resonate to this day.