Utopia

Utopia by Thomas More is one of the foundational texts of political philosophy — the 1516 work in which the English statesman and humanist described an ideal island society organised on principles of reason, justice, and communal ownership. More’s invention of the word and concept ‘utopia’ (literally ‘no place’) set in motion a tradition of political imagination that extends from Campanella and Francis Bacon through Marx and William Morris to the science fiction of the twentieth century. The book is simultaneously a serious political argument, a humanist satire, and an ambiguous meditation on whether the ideal society it describes is genuinely desirable or subtly alarming. Published by Wordsworth Classics in an accessible edition, this is essential reading for students of political theory, history of ideas, and the literature of political imagination.