A man’s life lies in his letters,” Newman wrote to his sister Jemima in 1863, adding that it was often difficult to print correspondence in full, yet distorting to print extracts. Posthumous publication was at the mercy of “the perspicacity or straightforwardness of an Editor.” The late Father Charles Stephen Dessain, of the Birmingham Oratory which Newman founded, felt so strongly that extracts would misrepresent Newman that he determined the letters and diaries must be printed in their entirety. The result was an astonishing thirty-two volumes, of which Dessain lived to edit twenty-one. They may all be read online at www.newmanreader.org. Monsignor Roderick Strange, Dessain’s only full-time graduate student, has put together a selection which, plentiful though it is, leaves one wanting more. He contributes a succinct and helpful introduction, copious but not redundant annotation, and a handy biographical index of correspondents. My only quibble is that he flatters his readers’ classical attainments (or at least mine), since not all the Latin and Greek passages are translated.

Newman expended the same pains on what he felt to be important letters as he did on any of his books. They were drafted, revised, copied, filed away, and frequently annotated as he re-read them years, or decades, later—all with a quill pen, since he found metal pens awkward to handle. Writing to a seminarist who had asked his advice about English style, Newman insisted on the virtues, which he said he had learned from Cicero, of clarity, simplicity, and