Utopia

Outline

Utopia (1516) describes an imaginary island society organised around reason, shared property, religious tolerance, and the common good. Through the traveller Raphael Hythloday, Thomas More contrasts this ideal community with the injustice, greed, and inequality of sixteenth-century Europe. The book gave the world the word utopia and remains a lasting inspiration for debates about the perfect society and its dangers.

• Utopia describes an imaginary island society organised around reason, shared property, religious tolerance, and the common good.
• The traveller Raphael Hythloday is the voice through which More presents the island and its way of life.
• More sets the ideal island against the injustice, greed, and inequality he saw in sixteenth-century Europe.
• The book gave the world the word utopia and still shapes debates about the perfect society and its dangers.

Thomas More (1478–1535) was an English lawyer, humanist scholar, and statesman who served as Lord Chancellor under King Henry VIII. He was executed after refusing to accept the king as head of the Church of England. A friend of the scholar Erasmus, he is remembered for Utopia and was later declared a saint by the Catholic Church.