Thomas More: A Biography [Paperback]

Richard Marius (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 15, 1999

Over the centuries, biographers of Thomas More have always praised him and made him an example for their own times. He was a man for all seasons. This Tudor prelate and Lord Chancellor of England shared human qualities identifiable in all ages—pride, love, ambition, generosity, hypocrisy, and greed. He was less than common because he was witty and a great storyteller—the best between Chaucer and Shakespeare. Truly, he was a Renaissance man with the contradictions such praise imposes on a towering figure. In Richard Marius's authoritative and engaging portrait, Sir Thomas More, the martyr and brilliant public figure, is a lesson for our season.

Editorial Reviews

Review

[Richard Marius's Thomas More] will be the definitive popular biography. Custody of the popular memory of a figure like More is of some real importance, and Marius's custody is exemplary. His book is accessible enough to be read by a wide audience but complete and original enough to merit reading by a specialized audience. It is as subtle and satisfying a portrait as I have encountered in years.
--Jack Miles (Los Angeles Times Book Review )

A very remarkable and exciting book, full of knowledge and understanding.
--G. R. Elton (New York Review of Books )

[Richard Marius's] principal claim as a biographer is an unrivaled knowledge of More's works. This serves him very well, in my view. For instance, he is the first writer to stress the central importance of More's unfinished biography of Richard III.
--Paul Johnson (New York Times Book Review )

From the Back Cover

[Richard Marius's Thomas More] will be the definitive popular biography. Custody of the popular memory of a figure like More is of some real importance, and Marius's custody is exemplary. His book is accessible enough to be read by a wide audience but complete and original enough to merit reading by a specialized audience. It is as subtle and satisfying a portrait as I have encountered in years.-Jack Miles, Los Angeles Times Book Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 586 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (March 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674885252
• ISBN-13: 978-0674885257
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.5 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,185,988 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not a work of high scholarship, April 27, 2002

By 

Jim Seligman (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thomas More: A Biography (Paperback)

This biography often reads more like a novel. Although Marius can lay a claim to scholarship as the editor of More's Collected Works at Yale, his writings on historical figures lack for objectivity and attention to avoiding basic prejudices and popular suppositions.

Louis Martz, the great More scholar at Yale, was moved to write a "defense" of More's humanism and some of the basic facts of More's life, commonly known to all More scholars, subsequent to Marius' biography.

What is interesting is that Marius is equally poor is writing about Martin Luther, one of More's literary adversaries. So much so that in the recent reviews of the Luther biography, Marius is accused of the "catholic" view of Luther, when in fact Marius is a protestant.

I believe that the trouble arises when one does not stick to the scholarship and the facts, and allows oneself to put in imaginary thoughts and conversation and personal biases. Then you just have a work of fiction.

Better to stick to a readable and sound biography such as that of Peter Ackroyd.

8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A worthy biography of Sir Thomas More, February 15, 2004

By 

Boileau0663 (Tournai, Belgique) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Thomas More: A Biography (Paperback)

This is a detailed, well-researched and thouroughly conventional biography of the life of Thomas More, Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, Catholic apologist and saint, man of letters, London lawyer and model father.

In painting More's portrait, Richard Marius not only describes all aspects of his busy life, including his family life, but also strives to make us acquainted with some of the prominent figures of the time. Erasmus receives special attention and both his works and the correspondence between him and More is treated at great length. Luther is another important character, along with other Reformation figures.

The author describes meticulously the content of More's main works starting with his account of the life of Richard III and ending with the treatise on death he wrote when he was imprisoned in the Tower. Each book is analysed in depth both as to its philosophical, theological and political import and as a reflection of More's character and beliefs. In fact, the discussion of More's literary production takes up about half the book, so that "Thomas More: A Biography" could appropriately be renamed "Thomas More's Literary Career".

Another reviewer has torn into this biography, accusing Marius of "deconstructionism". At first I found that Marius's view of Thomas More was surprisingly free of many modern prejudices. Let us not forget that More is a man who should be thouroughly repellent to any liberal scholar: he persecuted heretics relentlessly. He seemes to have been what we now call a religious fanatic, a XVIth century version of Khomeini.

Now, except for the odd passage, there are no such cynical or condescending remarks as one often finds under the pen of many modern historians when discussing the Middle Ages or Catholicism in this biography. Sometimes I even suspected that Marius might be a crypto-Catholic, for he shows more than disinterested objectivity in his treatment of the causes that More passionately espoused. Sometimes he even vents his repulsion for some Protestant doctrines or the behavior of More's adversaries, describing for example the King at the time of his infatuation with Anne Boleyn as "a boar in rut" and the woman herself as "a strumpet".

But when I finished the book I was struck by the fact that it had left in my mind a rather negative image of Sir Thomas More. In any case, I didn't think he deserved to be considered as a saint by the Church. In his depiction of him, Marius seems to focus more on the somber aspects of his personality and he certainly doesn't dwell on the likeable or admirable ones.He goes even so far as to compare him with the hateful Torquemada.

Marius provides a general psychological explanation for More's course of action. It is not specially far-fetched or outrageous, just slightly Freudian: More, says Marius, was obsessed with death and fought against his own sexual drives, traits which were common enough among his contemporaries. Fortunately, Marius does not dwell heavily on his psychological theories and when he does attempt an explanation, refrains from using any pseudo-pschoanalytic jargon.

"Thomas More: A Biography" is specially valuable for the light it throws on the doctrinal issues that were at the center of the Reformation and I gained many an insight from Marius'clear and profound reflections. The only thing which I found lacking is a detailed description of political events, economic life(More lived in an age of three-digit inflation!)civilization and daily life in 16th century England but then the book might easily have been twice as long. To put it briefly, this biography is more a discussion of ideas than of events, which is understandable since More was a rather second-rate political figure (at least this is how he appears in this work).

What one will not find either in this book is evocative descriptions of XVIth century London or of King Henry's court. You will not be apprised here of the name of More's dog or find a description of the furniture of his house. Marius doesn't try to recreate the age with a wealth of details: he focuses on More, his books, and on the religious issues and controversies of the time.

The book is long and does contain a few lengthy and dull passages, especially in the beginning and when Marius goes in great detail into More's books and correspondence but the narrative gets more and more interesting toward the end. One aspect of the book which I found confusing is the author's inability to tell us what was the real state of public opinion in More's time. He often says that the English people were fiercely anticlerical but also states that they were overwhelmingly for Catherine of Aragon and against the Henry's divorce. To me this seems to be a blatant contradiction. Apparently, Marius has failed to make a distinction between the intelligentsia and the popular classes and between London and the rest of the country.

All in all, I still think that this is a worthy book. I don't think Marius could have been more sympathetic to More without sounding as a Catholic hagiographer. In addition to it and for people who want a more Catholic view of the period, I recommend Hilaire Belloc's books on the Reformation. People interested in a scholarly work about English Catholicism at the time of Thomas More should read The Stripping of the Altars.

8 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you like a little speculation and introspection...., July 16, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Thomas More: A Biography (Paperback)

I recently noticed an academic review of Marius's new biography of Luther that was quite harsh, accusing him of being anachronistic and presentist in all his books (i.e. attributing modern attitudes to a person from a different time period). At least in this book, it is true that Marius tends to see in More some aspects of Marius's own personality, especially Marius's struggles as an evangelical Christian with some doubts. He also depicts More more unfavorably than do most biographies (for one thing More had a vulgar sense of humor). But even though I am an atheist and a More fan, I thought most of Marius's insights hit home and some were really intriguing. As the editor of the More papers, Marius really knows the subject, and the deep feeling of this book (which is never self-indulgent) had me pacing the room while reading it. Overall I thought it was a great great book; I liked it better than Ackroyd's more recent More biography.