Product Description

Thomas More: Utopia/ Francis Bacon: New Atlantis/Henry Neville: The Isle of Pines With the publication of Utopia (1516), Thomas More introduced into the English language not only a new word, but a new way of thinking about the gulf between what ought to be and what is. His Utopia is at once a scathing analysis of the shortcomings of his own society, a realistic suggestion for an alternative mode of social organization, and a satire on unrealistic idealism. Enormously influential, it remains a challenging as well as a playful text. This edition reprints Ralph Robinson's 1556 translation from More's original Latin together with letters and illustrations that accompanied early editions of Utopia. Utopia was only one of many early modern treatments of other worlds. This edition also includes two other, hitherto less accessible, utopian narratives. New Atlantis (1627) offers a fictional illustration of Francis Bacon's visionary ideal of the role that science should play in the modern society. Henry Neville's The Isle of Pines (1668), a precursor of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, engages with some of the sexual, racial, and colonialist anxieties of the end of the early modern period. Together these texts illustrate the diversity of the early modern utopian imagination, as well as the different purposes to which it could be put.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57392 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Customer Reviews

A useful anthology, though the introduction lacks the depth of many editions devoted solely to "Utopia"
This is a useful anthology which contains the well-known "Utopia" alongside the less known "New Atlantis" and the even more obscure "Isle of Pines". These are all interesting texts in themselves, and the editor should be commended for bringing them together in a mainstream publication.

People should be aware, though, that all of these texts are available for free on the internet and the introduction, insightful though it is, is relatively insubstantial - for those who don't mind reading off a computer screen, Project Gutenberg might be a better first port of call. Moreover, for those studying "Utopia" alone, there exists a more up-to-date translation from the Latin in the "Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought" series (ed. Logan) with a more thorough introduction, and the introduction of the Penguin edition is comprehensive further still (though the translation, by Paul Turner, is more dated).

This said, I'd recommend this edition both for the casual reader who wants easy access to all three texts and doesn't want to get them off the internet, and the more serious reader who's looking for up-to-date editorial insights: the introduction, despite its brevity, certainly has lots of this.