Abstract
Sir Thomas More's history of Richard III never became more than a work in progress, which he returned to at intervals to revise and improve. Of his version in Latin, three drafts survive. A fourth was published in Louvain in 1565. It will be argued here that this represents the text as More first wrote it, and not, as Daniel Kinney has maintained, a corrupt copy of the work, further garbled by its early editors. Of the two extant English versions, one was printed by Richard Grafton in 1543. More's nephew, William Rastell, then published what he claimed was the only authentic version. His belief has been generally accepted by scholars. It is proposed that, in fact, he had unwittingly obtained a defective draft of the History, which More had discarded after making the revisions that appear in Grafton's text. These reassessments will lead, it is hoped, to a better appreciation of More as a literary craftsman.
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