He was also a popular author and novelist at the start of the 20th century, whose books usually dealt with then controversial religious and social questions,[1] and is credited as the creator of the modern English Catholic novel.

[1][2] He studied under Cardinals Johann Baptist Franzelin, Camillo Tarquini, and Perrone while at the university, received a BC and DD and was present during the First Vatican Council and taking of Rome in 1870.

In 1873, he was ordained as a Catholic priest at St. John Lateran and returned to England to teach philosophy and religious history at Birmingham (or Olton) Theological College.

Barry began traveling the country, first going on mission in Wolverhampton in 1883, delivered addresses in the United States in 1893, and lectured at the Royal Institution as well as in many parts of England.

[6] In later novels, such as Arden Massiter (1900), a youthful English socialist becomes entangled in Italian revolutionary politics, while The Wizard's Knot (1901) criticised the Celtic Revivalism.

These included biographies on religious figures such as Cardinal Newman and Ernest Renan, and on Catholicism in general, with his most notable works being The Papal Monarchy (1902) and Heralds of Revolt (1904).