Just Released: "Newman and His Critics" by Edward Short

From Gracewing Publishers:

The third volume of Edward Short’s trilogy on Newman, following on the much acclaimed Newman and His Contemporaries and Newman and His Family, which Gracewing now publishes in a handsome uniform edition. ‘An enthralling and intricate picture of Newman the saint, the friend, the priest, the intellectual, the apologist and the controversialist…This capstone volume brings the author’s trilogy to a masterly close. It is full of judiciously chosen quotations from a paradigmatic range on interlocutors, critics in the best and highest sense of the word, and interlaced with passages from Newman’s own works, all adroitly orchestrated and suffused with deep understanding of Newman and a thorough command of his texts…Bracing, rewarding reading.’ Dr Reinhard Hűtter

Edward Short is the author of Newman and his Contemporaries, and Newman and his Family, both now reissued by Gracewing in uniform editions to the present volume, as well as Newman and History. The first volume of his collected essays and reviews, as Adventures in the Book Pages, was acclaimed by the Catholic Herald as "wise, witty and entertaining." His critical edition of the first volume of Newman's Difficulties of Anglicans introduces and annotates the lectures that Newman delivered in London in 1850, which, taken together, constitute a dress rehearsal for his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Edward Short Short also edited the Saint Mary's Book of Christian Verse (2022), which Prof. Emma Mason of Warwick University called "a mesmerizingly beautiful anthology." His latest collection, What the Bells Sang: Essays and Reviews (2023) includes far-ranging pieces on poets, novelists, moralists and historians. Lord Andrew Roberts, Churchill's biographer, called the book "beautifully written," "brave" and "wise."

I read several chapters in manuscript form and look forward to reading the whole work and reviewing it. Note that I've read and reviewed the first two volumes in the trilogy, Newman and His Contemporaries and Newman and His Family, which will now be re-issued by Gracewing Publishers (available next month).

Short provides biographical sketches of each of Newman's critics (unfavorable or favorable), describes his interactions with them (except for the late Father Ian Ker, his twentieth century biographer), and Newman's responses to their criticisms, where applicable. Short gives both the critics and Newman fair space to present their cases. There's a wonderful spirit of sympathy and compassion throughout the book (based on my reading of the chapters submitted to me.)

On the back cover--rather hard to read here, but better on amazon--the blurbs are most complimentary, from Dr. Andrew Meszaros, Reverend Gerald E. Murray (he's often on EWTN's World Over program and writes for The Catholic Thing), and Dr. Reinhard Hutter.

It's definitely a book any student of Newman should read.