diff --git a/CHANGELOG.textile b/CHANGELOG.textile
index a3ff742..a6a67da 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.textile
+++ b/CHANGELOG.textile
@@ -1,5 +1,10 @@
+
 h1. Textile Changelog
 
+h2. Development
+* Bugfixes:
+**  Allow text blocks with spaces around first and last newlines
+
 h2. Version 4.0.3
 * Update supported Python versions to 3.8 - 3.12 ("#83":https://github.com/textile/python-textile/issues/83)
 * Replace html5lib with nh3 for html sanitization
diff --git a/tests/test_textile.py b/tests/test_textile.py
index 84e9ddf..1916ec4 100644
--- a/tests/test_textile.py
+++ b/tests/test_textile.py
@@ -242,3 +242,9 @@ def test_relURL():
     t = textile.Textile()
     t.restricted = True
     assert t.relURL("gopher://gopher.com/") == '#'
+
+
+def test_whitespace_at_beginning_and_end():
+    expect = textile.textile('   \n   Testing 1 2 3   \n   ', html_type='html5')
+    result = '\t<p>Testing 1 2 3</p>'
+    assert result == expect
diff --git a/textile/core.py b/textile/core.py
index 4a2594f..fe9e2ea 100644
--- a/textile/core.py
+++ b/textile/core.py
@@ -442,9 +442,8 @@ def block(self, text):
 
         tag = 'p'
         atts = cite = ext = ''
-
         out = []
-
+        block = None
         for line in text:
             # the line is just whitespace, add it to the output, and move on
             if not line.strip():
diff --git a/textile/utils.py b/textile/utils.py
index 578af4e..2f2afd8 100644
--- a/textile/utils.py
+++ b/textile/utils.py
@@ -149,7 +149,9 @@ def list_type(list_string):
 
 def normalize_newlines(string):
     out = re.sub(r'\r\n?', '\n', string)
-    out = re.compile(r'^[ \t]*\n', flags=re.M).sub('\n', out)
+    # strip spaces around first and last newline
+    out = re.compile(r'^[ \t]*\n[ \t]*', flags=re.M).sub('\n', out)
+    out = re.compile(r'[ \t]*\n[ \t]*$', flags=re.M).sub('\n', out)
     out = out.strip('\n')
     return out