SOURCE: “Venture and Response: The Dialogical Strategy of John Henry Newman's Loss and Gain,” in Critical Essays on John Henry Newman, edited by Ed Block, Jr., 1992, pp. 23-38.

In the following essay, Block argues that Loss and Gain should be viewed as fiction—rather than as a satirical or autobiographical work—and describes the novel's dialogical structure.

Critics generally see Loss and Gain, John Henry Newman's first novel, published in 1847, as either a satiric, Catholic polemic or a somewhat unfeeling portrayal of his reasons for converting from Anglicanism to Catholicism two years earlier.¹ Other than Kathleen Tillotson's praise—which is illusively scattered (Tillotson 133 et. al.)—there is no thorough-going study of the novel's surprisingly modern dialogical structure.² Undoubtedly Wilfrid Ward's story of a friend hearing Newman “laughing to himself” while writing the novel in Rome in the winter of 1847 (Ward 191) has affected subsequent readings of the novel. Nevertheless...