The Last Letters of Thomas More

Written from the Tower of London, these letters of Thomas Moore still speak powerfully today. The story of Thomas Moore, recently told in Peter Ackroyd’s bestselling biography, is well known. In the spring of 1534, Thomas Moore was taken to the Tower of London, and after fourteen months in prison, the brilliant author of Utopia, friend of Erasmus and the humanities, and former Lord Chancellor of England was beheaded on Tower Hill. Yet Moore wrote some of his best works as a prisoner, including a set of historically and religiously important letters. The Last Letters of Thomas Moore is a superb new edition of Moore’s prison correspondence, introduced and fully annotated for contemporary readers by Alvaro de Silva. Based on the critical edition of Moore’s correspondence, this volume begins with letters penned by Moore to Cromwell and Henry VIII in February 1534 and ends with Moore’s last words to his daughter, Margaret Roper, on the eve of his execution. Moore writes on a host of topics-prayer and penance, the right use of riches and power, the joys of heaven, psychological depression and suicidal temptations, the moral compromises of those who imprisoned him, and much more. This volume not only records the clarity of Moore’s conscience and his readiness to die for the integrity of his religious faith, but it also throws light on the literary works that Moore wrote during the same period and on the religious and political conditions of Tudor England.