Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Being a History of his Religious Opinions.

NEWMAN, John Henry.

Item Number: 111206

London: Longmans, Green, Reader, and Dyer, 1882.

Finely bound example of Cardinal John Henry Newman’s Apologia. Octavo, bound in full vellum with morocco spine labels lettered in gilt, armorial gilt devices to the front and rear panels, marbled endpapers, all edges red. In near fine condition.

In 1862, Newman began to prepare autobiographical and other memoranda to vindicate his career. The occasion came when, in January 1864, Charles Kingsley, reviewing James Anthony Froude's History of England in Macmillan's Magazine, incidentally asserted that "Father Newman informs us that truth for its own sake need not be, and on the whole ought not to be, a virtue of the Roman clergy." In the conclusion of the Apologia, Newman expressed sympathy for the Liberal Catholicism of Charles de Montalembert and Jean-Baptiste Henri Lacordaire: "In their general line of thought and conduct I enthusiastically concur, and consider them to be before their age."