This novel about a young man’s intellectual and spiritual development was the first work John Henry Newman wrote after entering the Roman Catholic Church in 1845. The story describes the perplexing questions and doubts Charles Reding experiences while attending Oxford. Though intending to avoid the religious controversies that are being heatedly debated at the university, Reding ends up leaving the Church of England and becoming a Catholic. A former Anglican clergyman who was later named a Catholic cardinal, Newman wrote this autobiographical novel to illustrate his own reasons for embracing Catholicism.

About the Editor: Trevor Lipscombe is the director of The Catholic University of America Press. He earned his doctorate at the University of Oxford and has taught at Oxford, the City University of New York, and Johns Hopkins University. He served for ten years on the editorial board of the Journal of Scholarly Publishing and is currently a member of the editorial board of the New Catholic Encyclopedia. He is the author of the Physics of Rugby (Nottingham University Press, 2009) and, with Alice Calaprice, author of Albert Einstein: A Biography (Greenwood, 2005).

Study guide available.