Thomas More
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few figures in English history have provoked such fierce and enduring debate as Sir Thomas More — scholar, statesman, martyr, and saint — and Richard Marius's monumental biography cuts through centuries of myth to present the man in all his dazzling complexity. Set against the turbulent backdrop of Henry VIII's court and the seismic upheaval of the English Reformation, Thomas More chronicles the life of a man who rose to become Lord Chancellor of England, only to be beheaded in 1535 for refusing to sanction his king's break with Rome. Marius, himself a distinguished historian, presents More not as the serene, canonised saint of popular imagination, but as a deeply conflicted human being — a brilliant lawyer and humanist friend of Erasmus who also sanctioned the persecution of Protestant heretics with unsettling zeal. Drawing on a vast range of primary sources and More's own voluminous writings, Marius constructs a portrait of a man perpetually at war with himself, torn between his love of the world and a fierce, almost medieval piety that ultimately demanded his death. The biography stands as a landmark work of historical scholarship, admired for its rigorous research, its psychological acuity, and its refusal to sentimentalise its subject. Marius writes with the narrative drive of a novelist and the precision of an archivist, making Thomas More as gripping as it is authoritative — leaving the reader to wonder whether the man who chose death over compromise was driven by conscience, or by something far darker and more ambiguous.
Author: Richard Marius
Format: Hardback
Genre: Biography
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
Few figures in English history have provoked such fierce and enduring debate as Sir Thomas More — scholar, statesman, martyr, and saint — and Richard Marius's monumental biography cuts through centuries of myth to present the man in all his dazzling complexity. Set against the turbulent backdrop of Henry VIII's court and the seismic upheaval of the English Reformation, Thomas More chronicles the life of a man who rose to become Lord Chancellor of England, only to be beheaded in 1535 for refusing to sanction his king's break with Rome. Marius, himself a distinguished historian, presents More not as the serene, canonised saint of popular imagination, but as a deeply conflicted human being — a brilliant lawyer and humanist friend of Erasmus who also sanctioned the persecution of Protestant heretics with unsettling zeal. Drawing on a vast range of primary sources and More's own voluminous writings, Marius constructs a portrait of a man perpetually at war with himself, torn between his love of the world and a fierce, almost medieval piety that ultimately demanded his death. The biography stands as a landmark work of historical scholarship, admired for its rigorous research, its psychological acuity, and its refusal to sentimentalise its subject. Marius writes with the narrative drive of a novelist and the precision of an archivist, making Thomas More as gripping as it is authoritative — leaving the reader to wonder whether the man who chose death over compromise was driven by conscience, or by something far darker and more ambiguous.