author
Francis William Newman
1805–1897
A restless Victorian thinker, he moved from evangelical faith to religious liberalism and wrote widely on ethics, language, politics, and social reform. His life joined serious scholarship with strong public causes, including anti-slavery and vegetarianism.
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 remarkably wide-ranging writer. He studied at Oxford, won high honors there, and later taught classics at Manchester New College and Latin at University College London. He was also the younger brother of John Henry Newman, though the two became known for very different religious paths.
His beliefs changed dramatically over time. After an early period of intense evangelical commitment, he broke with orthodox Christianity and became associated with a more independent, rational, and theistic outlook. That searching spirit shaped much of his writing, which ranged across religion, politics, literature, and language, and helped make him one of those nineteenth-century figures who seemed to be thinking about everything at once.
He was active well beyond the classroom. Newman supported abolitionism, backed a number of reform causes, and became well known as an advocate of vegetarianism. He died in 1897, leaving behind the picture of a deeply serious, energetic, and unconventional writer whose curiosity never really settled down.