Oxford Apostles

Sir Geoffrey Faber's Oxford Apostles, a character study of the Oxford Movement, is not, in the usual sense of the word, a 'religious' book. It is primarily an attempt to understand and to explain a deeply interesting crisis in the history of ideas, by a study of personalities.The central figure in this study is Newman, whose life is traced in detail up to the point of his conversion to Roman Catholicism. Round him are grouped a number of other men, whose careers and characters are presented with equal vividness - Keble, Pusey, Froude, Whatley, Blance White, Hampden and many others of lesser significance. The author combines these various life-stories with great skill into a single dramatic and moving form; and his expositions of the ecclesiastical and political background of early nineteenth-century Oxford, and of the general characteristics of the movement, hold the reader's attention. First published in 1933 this remains an authoritative work.