MORE, St. Thomas

£35,000 · Offered by Sokol Books

Exceptionally important first edition of the works of St. Thomas More in English, edited by his nephew, William Rastell, arranged in chronological order with marginal notes and a dedication to Queen Mary; the first collected edition of any of More s works. Thomas More was called by his contemporary John Colet the one genius of Britain. Coming as he did at the end of the Middle ages and at the beginning of the modern era, he was a great transitional figure, passionately devoted to the good things of medieval Europe and yet an enthusiastic partisan of the New Learning. He was the warm friend and supporter of Erasmus, and was in close touch with all the important figures in England of his time. With a style inherited, as R.W. Chambers points out, from the great English devotional writers, he immensely broadened the scope of English prose. Still his work, although it includes as often-reprinted classic in the Utopia, remains in large part inaccessible to the modern reader. The English writings have lain dormant in the black-letter of the 1557 folio, printed by his nephew William Rastell. Among the many items in that volume is an important text of the History of Richard III, based, according to Rastell, on a copy in More s own hand. (the text printed by Grafton in his edition of Hardyng s chronicle (1543) is corrupt.) The modern reader knows this History as it is reflected in Shakespeare s Richard III, which is based upon it. David R. Watkins. The St. Thomas More Project The Yale

• Binding: Hardcover

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