author
Francis William Newman
1805–1897
A restless Victorian thinker, he moved from classical scholarship into wide-ranging writing on religion, ethics, politics, and social reform. His books reflect an independent mind that was never content with easy answers.
2 Audiobooks
Phases of Faith; Or, Passages from the History of My Creed
by Francis William Newman
On Translating Homer
by Matthew Arnold, Francis William Newman
About the author
Born in London in 1805, Francis William Newman was an English classical scholar, moral philosopher, and prolific writer. He studied at Oxford, taught classics and Latin, and later held a long professorship at University College London. He was also the younger brother of John Henry Newman, though the two became known for very different religious paths.
Newman wrote across an unusually broad range of subjects, including theology, language, history, politics, and ethics. Rather than staying within one field, he became known as a vigorous independent thinker whose work often challenged orthodox opinion and explored faith from a personal, questioning angle.
He was active in public causes as well as scholarship, supporting reform movements and vegetarianism. He died in 1897, leaving behind the record of a learned and deeply individual Victorian writer whose life joined intellectual curiosity with moral seriousness.