Newman Prayer Book

A reader recently wrote asking where one might be able to acquire the Newman prayer book, from which I have been offering excerpts recently. I sent an email in reply, but it was bounced back with "fatal errors," so I post the information here for anyone interested:

Here's the data I find in the prayer book --

Vincent Ferrer Blehl, S.J., editor, A Newman Prayer Book (Birmingham, UK: V.F. Blehl, S.J., 1990).

There is also the following information:

Publisher: V.F. Blehl, S.J., The Newman Secretariat, The Oratory, Hagley Road, Birmingham B16 8UE, England.

My hunch is that I purchased the booklet on a visit in 1999 to the Birmingham Oratory to visit the Newman Library there, where he lived. I would suggest writing to the Oratory directly at the address given and inquiring about the availability of the booklet for purchase.

The Oratory also has a website: http://www.birmingham-oratory.org.uk/ that may be worth exploring. I note that they do have a much larger collection of Newman's prayers available, listed online (though one would still have to write to them by regular mail to make the purchase). I don't see the particular prayer book I've been using listed (which is a very small booklet of only 33 pages); but it may be available if you contact them.

There is a "Contact Us" link with both phone numbers and email addresses.

The only other place I can think that I may have purchased it is the London (Brompton) Oratory, which has a book shop in the church, but no online link.

Regardless, the booklet may not be ideal. For example, the editor changed Newman's second person pronouns ("Thee," Thy" "Thine) when addressing God to "you," "your" and "yours"), which accords with the horizontalizing contemporary chumminess toward the Almighty, but is hardly faithful to Newman's eloquent (and reverent) Victorian form.

There are other books of Cardinal Newman's prayers you may prefer. In the meantime, there are some of his most memorable prayers online, if you google for them, using "prayer" + "Cardinal" + "Newman" etc.

Wish I could be more help.