John Henry Newman (1801-90) was brought up in the Church of England in the Evangelical tradition. An Oxford graduate and Fellow of Oriel College, he was appointed Vicar of St Mary's Oxford in 1828; from 1839 onwards he began to have doubts about the claims of the Anglican Church for Catholicity and in 1845 he was received into the Roman Catholic Church. He was made a Cardinal in 1879. His influence on both the restoration of Roman Catholicism in England and the advance of Catholic ideas in the Church of England was profound.

Volume XXXII contains a further 513 letters which have surfaced since the publication of the preceding volumes, spanning the years 1830 until virtually the eve of Newman's death on 11 August 1890. There are, for example, thirty-four letters to Thomas Arnold junior following his conversion to Roman Catholicism on 18 January 1856 in Van Diemen's Land and his subsequent return to England with his wife and family; seven letters to Charles Marriott and seven letters from him dealing mainly with the sale of the Littlemore property following Newman's secession to Rome on 9 October 1845; and eighteen letters to various members of the Mozley family, including two letters to Jemima in the wake of the Achilli trial in 1853.

Other recipients include the Duke of Norfolk and his family; Charles Wellington Furse, Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, near Oxford, and future Archdeacon of Westminster; and Miss Maria Trench, who was preparing some of Keble's papers and reviews for publication. There are also two letters to Pope Leo XIII petitioning him for the canonization of John Fisher, Thomas More, and the English Martyrs.