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 or 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 the novelist Charles
Kingsley on his personal integrity. With it he not only convinced a suspicious public of the sincerity of his beliefs,
but he also produced a literary masterpiece which has often been compared with St Augustine's Confessions.
The Apologia, which ends with a brilliant defence of Catholicism, was a turning-point in English cultural history,
successfully challenging the dominant tradition of 'no Popery'. For Newman personally the work was a 'mental child-bearing'
as he recounted the dramatic story of a conversion which rocked the Church of England to its foundations and which
was to have profound consequences for the Roman Catholic Church.