Religion and Politics
In nineteenth century Europe, religion and politics were strongly tied. In England, reforms in government gradually admitted Roman Catholics into public life: in the Universities, in government and in other areas. These changes took place against a strong undercurrent of anti-Catholic feeling, manifest in the extensive "No-Popery" literature of the time. The collection contains a large number of these tracts and also key documents concerning the reforms which emancipated Catholics in Britain. Anti-Catholic suspicions were not merely a product of the uneducated. One of Newman's greatest works Apologia Pro Vita Sua, was written in response to a long pamphlet attacking him and the Catholic faith. Newman answered the attack in a set of pamphlets subsequently republished as a book. The Collection contains both a set of the rare pamphlets and a first edition of the book. The deep reflections which led to Newman's conversion to Catholicism are the subject of both the Apologia and the Grammar of Assent, represented in the Collection by an 1870 first edition.
