'An Aristocracy of Exalted Spirits': The Idea of the Church in Newman's Tamworth Reading Room by David P. Delio (review)

"The Tamworth Reading Room," Newman's seven letters to the London Times, written under the pseudonym "Catholicus," in response to a lecture by Sir Robert Peel at a new reading room he helped fund, has drawn comparatively little attention among scholars. A search on the International Centre for Newman Friends' online bibliography yields only four results, one of them being David Delio's doctoral dissertation on which this book is based. One can find a few more results on other databases, including Nina Burgis's 1964 M.A. dissertation, an edition of the letters along with textual and expository commentary. Scholars who have treated it in passing have focused on Newman's literary methods (Burgis), his satire (Ian Ker), his view of science (Stanley Jaki), his political thought (Terence Kenny), his view of education (Jane Rupert), or his view of faith and reason (Keith Beaumont). Most have seen the letters as having only a loose unity at best. If there is a unity, most have seen it as concentrated on the relationship between faith and secular knowledge.

Delio's volume, attractively made, though rather inconsistently copy edited (many pages are free of errors; others have three to four misspellings or words elided), aims at both correcting the lack of attention to these letters, which served in many ways as early attempts to get at ideas more fully examined in the Idea and Grammar, and to provide an account of their unity as found in his developing Catholic ecclesiology.

Concerning the first goal, Delio, in this first book-length treatment of the letters, provides a great deal of background material about Newman, Peel, and the political and theological histories of the decades before their fateful public collision. Chapter 1 gives alternating histories of the two figures, indicating the trajectory of their careers and what made Newman, an early fan of Peel's, decide that the Tory politician was a danger. Chapter 2 discusses more fully the British educational context of the reading room and Peel's address itself, along with a discussion of other contemporary reactions to it. Chapter 6 discusses the reception of the letters: by the press as a whole, by Peel himself (who responded in speeches both in 1841 and, obliquely, 1849), and by Newman and his Tractarian friends. Chapter 7 details the history of the letters and their ideas in Newman's future writings and indeed in his pastoral ministry in the Birmingham Oratory. All of this material, along with appendices including biographical entries on the main figures, Peel's address as it was printed in the newspapers, Newman's letters, and various other letters and press reactions to the two, make the book understandable for nonspecialists and even nonacademics, though the book's audience is primarily going to be academic. I was teaching the letters at the time I read the book and found it enormously helpful in giving my students an understanding of the context and importance of the letters.

Chapters 3-5 discuss the letters themselves, not only analyzing their content but recounting the history of Newman's dealings with the Times, press reaction, and indeed pushback from Peel's political supporters and crowing from his enemies—emboldened that a conservative newspaper would publish attacks on their man. In all of this discussion, Delio is fair with both Peel and Newman, drawing throughout a rather attractive picture of Peel as a politician while siding intellectually with Newman. Simultaneously, he acknowledges that Newman made mistakes in the text and sometimes disappointing, even "disingenuous" decisions, such as his refraining from naming George Craik in the 1872 edition as the author of the work he mistakenly attributed to Henry Brougham multiple times in the letters (97).

Concerning the second goal, namely Delio's contention that the unity in Newman's letters comes from his...