Red calf spine with gilt banding and title. Tan cloth boards.

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A very lovely, clean edition.

Sir Thomas More PC (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, amateur theologian, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord High Chancellor of England from October 1529 to May 1532. He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, which describes the political system of an imaginary island state.

More opposed the Protestant Reformation, directing polemics against the theology of Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli and William Tyndale. More also opposed Henry VIII’s separation from the Catholic Church, refusing to acknowledge Henry as supreme head of the Church of England and the annulment of his marriage to Catherine of Aragon. After refusing to take the Oath of Supremacy, he was convicted of treason on what he claimed was false evidence, and executed. On his execution, he was reported to have said: “I die the King’s good servant, and God’s first”.

Pope Pius XI canonized More in 1935 as a martyr. Pope John Paul II in 2000 declared him the patron saint of statesmen and politicians.

Anne Manning (17 February 1807 – 14 September 1879) was an English novelist. Born in London, she was an active writer, having 51 works to her credit. Though her writings were antiquated in style, they were considered to have some literary charm and a delicate historical imagination. Her best known novel features the young wife of the poet John Milton.

Manning never married, and was considered a chronic invalid, living for many years at Reigate Hill in Surrey until her mother died, and then at a sister’s house near Tunbridge Wells, where she died in 1879.

Although inexpensive reprints of Mary Powell and The Household of Sir Thomas More were published into the 1930s, Manning’s archaic style has long since fallen out of favor.