Newman was told that Catholic priests do not read sermons, but this does not mean that he made them up as he went along. He planned his Catholic sermons as meticulously as he did his famous Parochial and Plain , but he committed them to memory and then he made notes afterwards. His sermons, delivered over a period of thirty years, provide some fascinating insights into his active mind and the range of subjects he covered within the framework of the Church's liturgical year. James Mozley, writing in 1946, said, "A sermon of Mr. Newman's enters into our feelings, ideas, and modes of viewing things. Persons look into Mr. Newman's sermons and see their own thoughts in them." Unpublished for ninety years, Sermon Notes of John Henry Cardinal Newman shows Newman's brilliant mind at work.

Dr. James Tolhurst was Theology Tutor at the Pontifical English College, Valladolid, Spain from 1975 to 1980 and Dean of Studies for the Permanent Diaconate of the Southern English Dioceses from 1981 to 1989. He is the author of The Church . A Communion in the Preaching and Thought of John Henry Newman and The Newman Compendium for Sundays and Feastdays .