Rise and Progress of Universities and Benedictine Essays contains a selection of publications from the middle (1854-56) and late (1858-59) periods of John Henry Newman's association with the Catholic University of Ireland. The Rise and Progress of Universities consists of the twenty articles first published in the Catholic University Gazette from 1854-56. The last two essays of this volume, the Benedictine Essays , originally appeared in The Atlantis , which Newman instituted specifically for the publication of research by his faculty. An introduction to this volume, written by noted Newman scholar Mary Katherine Tillman, emphasizes the integral relation between the Rise and Progress of Universities essays on the historical development of universities, and Newman's "bare and necessary idea" of a university, as set forth in his seminal work, The Idea of a University .