Utopia is a distant island where the inhabitants are thriving and justice and reason prevail, in contrast to the realities of sixteenth-century Europe, where greed, superstition and unenlightened tradition reign. Using the framework of a traveller’s account to a fictional land, Thomas More created an ingenious treatise which envisioned a more humanist approach to laws and social structures, and coined the now common term “utopia”.
The Hero Classics series:
Meditations
The Prophet
A Room of One’s Own
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
The Art of War
The Life of Charlotte Bronte
The Republic
The Prince
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave
Utopia
Thomas More (1478–1535) was a Renaissance humanist thinker and statesman. Now famous for his masterpiece Utopia, he was executed under Henry VIII for refusing to recognize him as the leader of the Church of England, becoming a Catholic saint after his death.