In the last twenty years revisionist historians have contradicted much of what was taken for granted about the Oxford Movement since the late nineteenth century. Such historians have challenged assumptions that the Movement was focused on Oxford University rather than on parish churches, that the Tractarian story must be told from the perspective of the well-known leaders rather than their acolytes, that the dominance of Romanizers over moderates within the Movement led to its decline when Newman converted to Rome.

Now this book challenges the assumption that the Movement was mainly concerned with Catholic renewal in the Church of England, and had little interest in or impact anywhere else. While revising this assumption, the book's contributors draw from the rich veins of recent scholarship just mentioned. Ironically, however, probably the most successful revisionist of recent times, Peter B. Nockles, in the book's ‘Prelude’, reasserts the Movement's dependence on Oxford University – and more particularly the dependence of the leaders on Oriel College. Thus Nockles begins a collection of essays concerning the wider world of Tractarianism with a particular place and set of people. Nockles gives a comprehensive account of Oxford Tractarianism, including the debt Newman and his friends owed to their future enemies Archbishop Whately and Provost Hawkins.

Part I of the book concentrates on the British Isles and the British colonies. To show the two co-editors at their revisionist best, let us begin with Chapter 3 on Scotland and Chapter 7 on America. Stewart J. Brown counter-intuitively reveals the Movement's large impact on the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland, not just on the Episcopal Church of Scotland. Then in his second chapter in the volume, Nockles, drawing many parallels between what happened in the Church of England and in the Episcopal Church in the United States, argues that Tractarianism was not just an English but was rather an Anglo-Saxon phenomenon: General Seminary in New York City even produced in Arthur Carey an Episcopal equivalent of Hurrell Froude. Nockles subtly shows why the freedom from state interference, which English Tractarians admired about the Episcopal Church, also brought challenges: ‘the lack of state financing for the Episcopal Church was a source of weakness and rendered Episcopalians dependent on the mother Church and this in turn exacerbated church party rivalry’ in America (p. 150). So both co-editors shed light on the role of establishment. Nockles reminds us that the English Tractarians depended on the establishment status that they criticized; similarly Brown suggests that it was by influencing the liturgy and architecture in the established Church of Scotland that Tractarianism ‘touched the largest proportion of the Scottish people’ (p. 77).

John Boneham's Chapter 2 on Wales and Rowan Strong's Chapter 4 on the Empire both take a leaf out of Nockles’ ‘Prelude’ by using something particular – in their case particular people – as the way into a wider subject. To borrow from Richard Southern in a different field, both deliver ‘a portrait in a landscape’. Isaac Williams, the Tract-writer and would-be poetry professor who was born in Wales, represents a non-Romanizing form of Tractarianism that was attractive to certain Welsh-language Anglicans who believed in apostolic succession but baulked at Transubstantiation. Henry Manning's robust ‘imperial Anglicanism about which Newman was almost entirely unconcerned’ (p. 79) meant Manning was initially supportive of the joint Lutheran-Anglican bishopric in Jerusalem while Newman opposed it. Manning's friendship with Bishop Selwyn in New Zealand widens the canvas to the further reaches of the British Empire.

Chapters 5 and 6 explore more fully the Movement in the Antipodes. Unfortunately, Austin Cooper writing on the Australian bishops’ conference of 1850 does not engage with the recent scholarship of Bruce Kaye and others. Seemingly unaware that the gathered Australian bishops consulted the constitution and convention records of the Episcopal Church in the United States, Cooper misre presents the conference as holding a view of apostolic succession that was antipathetic to ecclesial (and civic) democracy. David Hilliard then gives a concise history of Australian Anglo-Catholicism to the present day, introducing a lively collection of characters and communities.

Part II of the book explores the Movement's impact on Western Europe. In Chapter 8, Geoffrey Rowell summarizes the secondary literature on the English Tractarians’ interaction with Europe, nicely setting up six chapters of original research – on Germany, Belgium, France and on three aspects of Tractarian ecumenism. In Chapter 9, Albrecht Geck examines German Protestant responses to the Movement through the lens of Pusey's correspondence with F.A.G. Tholuck. Similarly in Chapter 13, Angela Berlis looks at German Catholic responses through the lens of Pusey's correspondence with J.J.I. von Döllinger. Geck's chapter gives a fuller account, in comparison with which the scarce amount of evidence in Berlis's chapter leaves one wondering what other (more mainstream) German Catholics thought about the Movement.

Chapters 10 and 11 deal with reception of the Movement in Belgium and France. There is some overlap in method and material here – inevitable in a volume of independent essays – for instance, when Jan De Maeyer and Karel Strobbe make use of a French Catholic publication (L'Ami de la Religion) to gauge Belgian feeling about the Movement. Writing on France, Jeremy Morris uses the same publication but with a different date for L'Ami's founding and different description of its readership (pp. 188–189, 215; the varying ways the two chapters cite L'Ami is also confusing). Morris's chapter gives a wonderfully clear account of the sorts of criticism three groups of French Catholics made of the Movement.

The closing chapters (12–14) examine different ecumenical endeavours in which the Tractarians engaged. Mark Chapman looks at relations with Eastern Orthodoxy, Angela Berlis (mentioned above) at relations with Döllinger, and the late Nigel Yates (to whom the book is dedicated) at relations with Old Catholics, Reformed Catholics and, in places where Anglican chaplaincies were established, Roman Catholics. While Chapman looks chiefly from the perspective of the Oxford leaders, Yates barely mentions them, preferring to regard such figures as Christopher Wordsworth, John Mason Neale and Henry Lascelles Jenner as representatives (in their diverse ways) of the Oxford Movement. Chapman and Yates therefore encapsulate the approach of the whole book: to look at new themes in the writings of the well-known leaders and to broaden our understanding of what the Movement was all about. This volume achieves both most admirably.