Description
John Henry Newman (1801-90) described writing this account of his religious development as ‘one of the most terrible trials that I have had’. Having inspired and led the Oxford of Tractarian Movement before he abandoned Anglicanism for the Church of Rome, Newman regularly found himself the target of virulent anti-Catholic prejudice in Victorian England. The Apologia was his autobiographical response to a public attack by novelist Charles Kingsley on his personal integrity. With it he not only convinced a supsicious public of the sincerity of his belief, but he also produced a literary masterpiece which has often been compared with St. Augustine’s Confession.
