Paul Shrimpton is to be commended for his thorough and meticulous illustration of John Henry Newman as a university man. Countering the perception of Newman as an intellectual whose Idea of a University was a Platonic ideal, he offers a narrative of the concrete ways in which Newman's theory took on life in his rectoring of the Catholic University in Dublin. Shrimpton writes:

Later, he points out the deficiency of relying solely on the Idea, arguing that “to try to appreciate his rich understanding of education by reading the Idea alone would be impossible” (479).

Shrimpton's book, therefore, is an important contribution to understanding how Newman's ideas took shape, and in understanding why the ultimate failure of the Catholic University had less to do with Newman and more to do with the cultural and ecclesiastical milieu in which he sought to found the institution.

The book relies on a great deal of archival research done at the Birmingham Oratory, University College Dublin, and Archbishop's House Dublin. With the publication of this research, we now have a much fuller story of the major players in the foundation of the university, especially Archbishop Paul Cullen of Dublin, who was instrumental in both supporting Newman's ideas and later criticizing what he perceived as their shortcomings, particularly in the area of discipline. Shrimpton depicts Cullen as embodying the ambiguity about the Catholic University that ultimately contributed to its demise: being a place of learning for laity, yet being (in Cullen's mind) more aptly supervised by the hierarchy. Newman, in contrast to Cullen, emerges as a liberal educator whose main goal was (to use today's language) student formation—that is, the formation of the whole student in a system that relied on tutors as well as professors. Shrimpton's use of the many letters and memos that Newman wrote as founding rector of the Catholic University fleshes out more precisely what Newman had in mind.

The model was neither exclusively “professorial” nor “tutorial,” but rather a combination of both. He envisioned recent university graduates (initially, Catholic converts from Oxford) in their twenties acting as mentors to undergraduates, forming close friendships with them in a residential setting, steering their charges in the direction of study and moral growth. Professors would supply the tuition proper, and would also be encouraged to conduct research and writing. The university's successful medical school and laboratories testify to Newman's modern thinking. Yet the primary aim of the curriculum would be ultimately a student's unified view of things, and thus the faculty of arts was for Newman the nucleus of the institution.

The book begins with a study of Newman's own experiences as a schoolboy, and moves on to explore how he developed a strong sensibility of the role of the tutor in his days at Oriel College, Oxford. His invitation to found a Catholic university in Dublin is the subject of chapter 2, while chapter 3 draws on a good deal of Newman's lesser-known writings to sketch his pastoral view of education. Chapter 4 is about the founding of the university in Dublin, and chapter 5 addresses the actual lived experience of students and faculty there. Chapters 6 and 7 address Newman's departure and legacy, and his later attempts to allow Catholics to study at Oxford. Several appendixes include excerpts from Newman's relevant writings, as well as biographies of those involved in the Catholic University.

For those interested in understanding Newman's contributions to Catholic higher education, both in the sitz im leben of nineteenth-century England and in his influence on modern conversations about Catholic university mission, Shrimpton's book is required reading.