"Criticism is often received as a sharp sword, enraging and embittering the recipient. Yet it may also prompt an honest re-examination and a humble defense of one's writings. Newman and his Critics, Edward Short's masterful account of John Henry Newman's dealings with hiscritics demonstrates that Newman's charity and love of the truth brought forth magnificent writings that are instructive and convincing, free of acrimony and acerbity. We have much to learn from Newman's truly Christian way of engaging with those who disagreed with him."THE REV. GERALD E. MURRAY, Author of Calming the Storm: Navigating the Crises Facing the Catholic Church and Society
Edward Short is the author of Newman and his Contemporaries, and Newman and his Family, both now reissued by Gracewing in uniform editions to the present volume, as well as Newman and History. The first volume of his collected essays and reviews, as Adventures in the Book Pages, was acclaimed by the Catholic Herald as "wise, witty and entertaining." His critical edition of the first volume of Newman's Difficulties of Anglicans introduces and annotates the lectures that Newman delivered in London in 1850, which, taken together, constitute a dress rehearsal for his Apologia Pro Vita Sua. Edward Short Short also edited the Saint Mary's Book of Christian Verse (2022), which Prof. Emma Mason of Warwick University called "a mesmerizingly beautiful anthology." His latest collection, What the Bells Sang: Essays and Reviews (2023) includes far-ranging pieces on poets, novelists, moralists and historians. Lord Andrew Roberts, Churchill's biographer, called the book "beautifully written," "brave" and "wise."