GERARD B. WEGEMER and STEPHEN W. SMITH, eds. The Essential Works of Thomas More. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2020. Pp. xxviii + 1473. $100 hbk. ISBN: 978-0-30022-337-8. Reviewed by Patrick F. O’CONNELL, Gannon University, Erie, PA 16541.

More's writings can be helpfully considered in three chronological and broadly thematic groups. The first of these, largely composed of explicitly literary and humanistic writings, dates from the beginning of the sixteenth century through the early 1620s. Virtually all of these works are included here: prose translations of his 280 Latin epigrams, in which the range of his interests and ideas is perhaps revealed more clearly than in any other work, called by its Yale editors incomparably the best such collection from its century; his Latin translations and imitation of the Greek satirist Lucian, whose witty use of the dialogue form would have a strong influence on much of More's best original writing; his so-called "Life" of the Italian humanist Pico della Mirandola, in fact a translation and adaptation of a variety of Pico's works prefaced by an English version of his life as written by his nephew; the handful of English poems of strikingly different styles and subject matter, from rollicking comedy to poignant elegy (two of which, a single stanza each, were actually written in the last months of his life); an unfinished meditation on the traditional "last things" (death, judgment, heaven and hell) that is in fact focused exclusively on human mortality; and of course his masterpieces, Utopia (1516), one of the seminal works of the Western literary tradition, which has provided both a name and a model for the numerous ideal commonwealths that have been imagined, and on occasion attempted in practice, from that day up to the present; and the unfinished History of King Richard III, which marks the beginning of modern historical writing in England and served as the principal source for Shakespeare's play (only the Latin version of this work, which largely parallels the English but is not identical to it and extends further than its counterpart, is not included in the material from this period).

A rich selection of More's letters is also included in this volume, comprising more than half the extant correspondence, including some not yet discovered at the time of the 1947 collected edition (unfortunately the projected Yale edition of the correspondence was never completed). The letters are gathered in three separate groups: most of those dated between 1501 and early 1534, shortly before More's arrest, comprise the first group and include letters to family, those concerning various political and religious issues and topics, and those to friends, particularly the great correspondence with Erasmus, the primary figure of the Christian humanist movement for religious reform and spiritual renewal in the Northern Renaissance and More's "other self." A separate section gathers More's great "open letters" to Dutch scholar Martin Dorp, to Oxford University, to future archbishop Edward Lee and to an anonymous monk (now identified as Carthusian John Batmanson) defending the "new learning" and the humanist reform program in general, and Erasmus's edition of the New Testament in particular, along with his epistolary response to a negative critique of his epigrams from the French poet Germanus Brixius, the object of More's satire in a few of these poems. The last group of letters, from the final months of his life, is included later in the volume.

The second period, extending from 1523 until 1533, years when More's attention was principally occupied with concerns of state, consists almost exclusively of works engaged in the controversies of the early Reformation, written on commission from political and religious authorities concerned to halt the spread of Lutheran influence, especially in England, beginning with his Latin Responsio (1523) to Martin Luther's attacks on Henry VIII's treatise on the sacraments. The best of these works is certainly the first written in English, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies (1529; 1531), a series of fictional conversations with a young visitor leaning toward Protestantism in which More draws on the entire spectrum of persuasive devices, including frequent humorous anecdotes, to warn of the dangers of the religious innovations entering England from the continent and to bring his interlocutor back to orthodox belief. Described by C. S. Lewis as perhaps the best specimen of Platonic dialogue ever produced in English, this work was followed in rapid succession by a series of polemical works of more theological and historical than strictly literary significance. The Supplication of Souls (1529) is a plea made by those suffering in purgatory defending current church practices of prayer and almsgiving for the dead, in response to a pamphlet entitled The Supplication of the Beggars that had attacked the alleged covetousness of clerics and disregard of the poor; The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer (1532; 1533) is a massive two-part sequel to the Dialogue that systematically replies to the English Lutheran William Tyndale's attack on that work; The Apology of Sir Thomas More, Knight (1533), structured as a defense against various charges made about his theory and practice in combating heresy, widens its scope to defend the clergy and church against accusations of corruption in an anonymous work issued by the king's own printer; before the year was out, the original author (lawyer Christopher St. German) had responded, and More had published a sequel, The Debellation of Salem and Bizance, repeating much of the argument, and even of the text, of the Apology and defending the independence of the church, an issue that of course would be of crucial importance for More in the months that lay ahead; finally The Answer to a Poisoned Book, appearing at the very end of 1533, was a defense of the traditional Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist. Four of these texts, the Dialogue, Supplication, Apology and Answer, are included in full here, with excerpts from the other three, the Latin Responsio and the two "sequels" B the Confutation and Debellation. This is certainly the most thorough assemblage of More's controversial works ever made available in a single collection since the sixteenth century, and allows readers to make an informed evaluation of the significance of this aspect of his thought at a critical moment in ecclesial and political history.