John Henry Newman is known today primarily for his Discourses on the Scope and Nature of University Education (1852) and his spiritual autobiography Apologia pro Vita Sua (1864). In his own time his fame rested on his hymns, sermons, and theological works, and his leading role in the Oxford Movement and the subsequent Catholic revival in England. His marvelously clear and supple prose, rather than his poetry, entitles him to a place in the English literary canon.

The eldest child of John Newman, a London banker, and Jemima Fourdrinier Newman, of Huguenot descent, Newman spent most of his early years at Ham, Richmond; in old age he dreamed of this home as a lost paradise. He was educated at Dr. Nicholas's private school in Ealing, where he developed a lifelong love of Scott's novels. During 1816 his father's bank failed; he suffered his first serious illness; and, influenced by a schoolmaster...