SOURCE: In an introduction to "Apologia Pro Vita Sua": Being A History of His Religious Opinions, by John Henry Cardinal Newman, edited by Martin J. Svaglic, Oxford University Press, 1967, pp. xxxvii-lix.

In the excerpt that follows, Svaglic introduces Newman's Apologia by locating the work in the larger context of Newman's conversion and his intellectual conflict with Charles Kingsley.

That Newman could write, in less than three months, the many-sided account of his spiritual history which is the Apologia, then the longest and still the most varied of his works, is an extraordinary testimony to his powers of concentration. It becomes more understandable, however, as we realize that the Apologia, like Kingsley's attack, was due to no sudden impulse but was rather the product of many years of reflection on various personal attacks and the desirability or possibility of answering them; on the nature of persuasion; on the essentials...