What You’ll Love about… Utopia by Thomas More
Utopia uses creativity, sensitivity, and wit to make important statements about economics, government, and philosophy.
Utopia (1516, 1518) by Thomas More (1478–1535) is often not understood well by readers coming to it for the first time. That has to do mainly with the way that the word “utopia” is used by us in everyday speech. “Utopia” now means something like “ideal society,” and that sets certain expectations for first-time readers, but More did not imagine Utopia as an ideal society, and he did not personally recommend many of the Utopians’ practices. As you will see, some of their practices are abominable, and some are just not very feasible. More did not really think it was possible or desirable to make an actual Utopia.
More wrote Utopia entirely in Latin while he was working as one of the two Undersheriffs of London. His original audience was a very exclusive group of Renaissance humanists, men who were interested in studying and reviving the use of classical languages such as Greek, Latin, and Hebrew. Peter Giles, who is fictionalized in Book I, and Desiderius Erasmus, who oversaw the original publication of Utopia, were two other important Renaissance humanists.
