Apologia Pro Vita Sua (Dodo Press)

I was looking forward to learning something about the author's life, maybe not as lively as Augustine's Confessions, but something with some flavor to it, but was disappointed. It doesn't seem to me as if this book can be read all on its own because of the way he refers to so many of his other writings without giving too much of a clear impression what the content was that makes his point, so the reader can only be totally mystified. I tried doing a little side reading about the Tractarian and Oxford movements but I only had a vague idea afterwards about the antagonists who were so viciously attacking him and some of the theological points that were at stake. And the theology is of the most abstract sort, transubstantiation and Manicheanism and the moral theory of lying, definitely not explained as though the reader were a novice in any way. I did read reviews of the book before picking it up and no one seemed to stress this aspect. Instead they mostly praised the quality of the English prose, which was indeed very elegant. So I would warn a prospective reader coming to this book with only scant knowledge of the circumstances of the subject that they might need to do a substantial amount of supplementation to get much out of the material.