Volume 32, Number 1 · January 31, 1985
The Actor Saint
By G.R. Elton
Thomas More: A Biography
by Richard Marius
Knopf, 562 pp., $22.95
It is nearly fifty years since we last had a serious biography of Thomas More. That was R.W. Chambers's exercise of pious naiveté, still loudly praised by More worshipers, the work of a man of letters with a limited sense of history and less experience as a biographer. Since 1935 our understanding of Henry VIII's reign has expanded at an exponential rate, and so has work on Thomas More; in particular, the great edition of his works, initiated by the late and justly lamented Richard Sylvester and published by the Yale University Press, has produced an enormous increase in the sources available for his life as well as extensive investigations into his career and his mind. The More described by Chambers belongs to a prehistoric age and to anyone not bemused by the book's reputation is altogether unsatisfactory. Thus it is good news that Richard Marius—almost the only one of the Yale editorial team who has shown himself able to look upon More without the distortions produced by canonization—has come to try his hand at the monumental task of assessing the new knowledge and placing a better-understood Thomas More before the 1980s.
Review, 3327 words
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