“The heart is a secret with its Maker; no one on earth can hope to get at it or to touch it.”

John Henry Newman

Reading challenges have not often been on my to-do list, even though I can see how they could be great opportunities to find inspiration from others doing something similar. It’s entertaining and inspiring to see the different takes and offshoots from each challenge, and perhaps–just perhaps–one will find the Holy Grail: a real gem of a book that you otherwise might never have found.

While doing my own prep for NaNoWriMo this year–or was I just YT surfing?–I stumbled across a Booktuber who mentioned her participation in “Victober” this year. I’d heard the term before but had forgotten about it. It has been going for the past few years, and is hosted by four Booktubers, with the intention of focusing on Victorian literature during the month of October. Each comes up with a particular “challenge” for those participating, as well as a group challenge.

As if I needed any excuse to read more Victorian lit, but…

Okay, it is too much fun to resist. To some degree, I’ll be doing my own thing with the Victober challenge. For one, mine definitely has a theme, and I’m not sure how common this is. For a while now I’ve been wanting to dip back into the life and writings of John Henry Newman, and now seems the perfect time, as a kind of celebration of his upcoming canonization on October 13th. So, although not all of the books I’ve chosen relate to Newman, there is definitely a recurring theme.

John Henry Newman, Anglican priest and Oxford intellectual who converted to Roman Catholicism in 1845, is one of the towering intellects in the history of the Church and of western literature, and a master of English prose. Newman’s life spanned almost the entirety of the Victorian period. His conversion from Anglicanism was one of the great scandals of his day, as he was such an influential figure among the Anglican faithful who flocked to his sermons, and was among the leaders of the Oxford Movement, which was intended to bring Anglicanism back to her Catholic roots and sacramentality. Interestingly, the more Newman plunged into the readings of the Church Fathers and into history, the more he became convinced that the church of Christ and of truth was to be found in the very Roman Catholicism that he had throughout his life been taught to treat with suspicion or reprehension. The decision to finally “cross the Tiber” came after a long and arduous time of soul-searching, intellectual rigor, and prayer. He knew that by taking this step, his influence would be completely undercut. He would lose friends, and hurt his family. (One of the reasons that I love John Henry Newman so much is his great capacity for friendship, and the value he places on friendship.) Such a conversion would not be seen as so earth-shattering now; but at the time, the bias against “popery” and “Romanism” was so strong in England that it was tantamount to a treasonous act.

The richness of Newman’s life and thought has led to a vast number of conversions, and his influence on the understanding of doctrine and also of the importance of the laity in the life of the church are among the reasons he has been called “the Father of the Second Vatican Council.”

In 2016, my mom and I, and two of my siblings, had taken a 20-year-in-the-making trip to England, with the heart of our stay being the 3 nights in Oxford, where we were able to visit St. Mary the Virgin and “Newman’s pulpit” where he preached the great Anglican sermons that were so beloved; and to nearby Littlemore, where he went on a kind of 3-year retreat after the censure of Tract 90, in order to pray and study and reflect on his position in the Anglican church and his leanings toward Rome. Our stop to Littlemore, and to his room and the little chapel where I held his Rosary for a few minutes, were easily the most moving and memorable moments of the whole England trip for me.

But, back to Victober. Here is a list of the challenges from the four hosts (click here for a link to the challenge video on the “Books and Things” page–she includes links to the rest of the hosts), along with an addition of my own:

• Challenge #1: A book written by a female author (with a bonus if the author is unfamiliar to you).
• Challenge #2: Reread a Victorian book.
• Challenge #3: Read a Victorian book under 250 pages and/or over 500 pages.
• Challenge #4: Read an underrated book published in the same year as your favorite Victorian book.
• General challenge: Read by candlelight, for at least some of a book.
• My own challenge: Read a book (not necessarily published during the period) about a favorite Victorian figure.

For Challenge #1, I decided to read Charlotte Yonge’s The Heir of Redclyffe, published in 1853, a novel which is not greatly remembered now, but which was very popular in its day. (And yes, I do get the “bonus” because CY is not an author I’ve read before!) Focusing on the spiritual struggle of the main character, Guy Morville, the novel lifts up the virtues of self-sacrifice and piety and was very influential. The connection to Newman here is that Yonge, like Newman, fell under the influence of John Keble; Yonge has been called “the novelist of the Oxford Movement.” (Warning: Don’t read the introduction by Barbara Dennis if you don’t want spoilers! I had to stop reading the introduction almost instantly. I really want to read Dennis’ biography of Yonge at some point, but here Dennis continues the tradition which is a pet peeve of mine: in so many summaries or introductions of Victorian novels, or even on the back covers, the endings are constantly spoiled. And with no “spoiler alert” warnings! This pet peeve deserves a whole separate blog post of its own. Do they think that we either: 1. Already know the ending? or, 2. Don’t care about knowing the ending ahead of time, as though we are merely studying it for a class and not reading it for fun, as a good story that we want to be surprised by? Either way, I find it infuriating.)

For Challenge #2, I’ll cheat a bit, since it won’t be a full re-read. I had started Newman’s An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent–usually just referred to as A Grammar of Assent–some time ago, but with school and work challenges, it fell by the wayside. So, in honor of the month and the theme, I will read/re-read it. It sounds like a daunting one, yes, and it’s certainly above me intellectually, but it is such an important work that I want to tackle it.

I’m combining Challenges #3, #4, and the Group Challenge in one book that is not Newman-related: It is a short novella (hence fulfilling the #3 requirement) and published in 1859, the year of my favorite novel’s publication (Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities), fulfilling the #4 requirement. It is a George Eliot novella called The Lifted Veil, which sounds rather gothic–hence, it will be the perfect book to read at least partially by candlelight! I found a kindle version for free on Amazon.

For my final challenge, I’m also somewhat cheating, as I’m continuing a book rather than starting it during the month of October. It’s the first volume of Meriol Trevor’s biography of John Henry Newman, called The Pillar of the Cloud.

There are so many other books, Newman related and otherwise, that I’d like to read soon, but I’d better keep my Victober choices to those I’ve mentioned, since I also have other books on the immediately-to-be-read list, such as a reread of The Hobbit as the first of our reads for a newly-created local book group focusing on the works of the Inklings. (Of course, Oxford-based as the Inklings are, there is even a tangential connection to Newman there!)

So, in the midst of our other family and work duties, here’s to a month of snatching, when one can, a few cozy hours with a blanket and a hot drink, curled up with a good Victorian read. And just as Newman proposed a toast “to conscience first,” I propose a toast to John Henry himself, for the world would be a far poorer place without his great mind and influence.