The Francis William Newman Society Research Library is an expanding online collection of documents in the public domain pertinent to the study of Francis William Newman and the “pure Theism” movement of the nineteenth century. Included in this library are the following:

1. The published writings of Francis William Newman (see the Bibliography provided on this website)
2. Published criticism of Newman
3. Biographical sketches of Newman
4. Sources referred to by Newman in his published writings
5. Published writings by other Theists (e.g., Theodore Parker, Charles Voysey, Frances Power Cobbe) or Unitarians (e.g., James Martineau, John James Taylor, Charles Wicksteed) contemporary with Newman

     The FWNS—after investing significant resources in an effort to acquire from libraries and bookstores, domestic and foreign, material and electronically reproduced copies of the published writings of Francis William Newman—found that Google was beginning a project of digitization and electronic distribution that would shortly render our efforts and expenditures redundant. Admittedly, at first, this was disconcerting, but upon recognizing that Google Books was able to reproduce documents with superior resolution, and moreover, was able to digitize documents acess to which the FWNS had been unsuccessful in obtaining, we learned to embrace the generous mission of Google and to make use of their work in order to supplement our files and replace inferior copies. Users of the FWNS Research Library may note that, when the complete text of a large document is provided by Google Books, we simply offer a direct link to their library, and whenever we have made use of their digitized archives in order to extract a relatively brief document from within a much larger file, we have retained the Google watermark.
     The Francis William Newman Society Research Library is a work in progress. Although we have hundreds of catalogued entries, it is possible that the particular document you are looking for has yet to be added. If a document is especially rare or fragile, a copy may be unavailable; if a work is under copyright protection, we may be legally prohibited from providing public access to it. However, many of our holdings are simply waiting to be scanned, catalogued, and uploaded. Please feel at liberty to inquire of the FWNS whether the item you seek is within our possession and can be prioritized for processing. Membership in the FWNS is neccessary for access to The Works of Francis William Newman on Religion: A Critical Edition and Letters of Francis William Newman, Chiefly on Religion: The Braithwaite Correspondence, 1868-1897 (Philosophy Documentation Center, 2009).