Includes bibliographical references and index.

The making of a London citizen / Caroline M. Barron -- Thomas More as humanist / James McConica -- More's rhetoric / Elizabeth McCutcheon -- More's public life / Cathy Curtis -- Thomas More and the heretics: statesman or fanatic? / Richard Rex -- The last years / Peter Marshall -- Reading Utopia / Dominic Baker-Smith -- More on tyranny: The history of King Richard the Third / George M. Logan -- 'The comen knowen multytude of crysten men': A dialogue concerning heresies and the defence of Christendom / Eamon Duffy -- 'In stede of harme inestimable good': A dialogue of comfort against tribulation / Andrew W. Taylor -- The lessons of Gethsemane: De tristitia Christi / Katherine Gardiner Rodgers -- Afterlives / Anne Lake Prescott -- Foundational resources for More studies.

"This Companion offers a comprehensive introduction to the life and work of a major figure of the modern world. Combining breadth of coverage with depth, the book opens with essays on More's family, early life and education, his literary humanism, virtuoso rhetoric, illustrious public career and ferocious opposition to emergent Protestantism, and his fall from power, incarceration, trial and execution. These chapters are followed by in-depth studies of five of More's major works - Utopia, The History of King Richard the Third, A Dialogue Concerning Heresies, A Dialogue of Comfort against Tribulation and De Tristitia Christi - and a final essay on the varied responses to the man and his writings in his own and subsequent centuries. The volume provides an accessible overview of this fascinating figure to students and other interested readers, whilst also presenting, and in many areas extending, the most important modern scholarship on him"--