Utopia

The name of this book has given an adjective to our language -- we call an impracticable scheme Utopian. Yet, under the veil of a playful fiction, the talk is intensely earnest, and abounds in practical suggestion. It is the work of a scholarly and witty Englishman, who attacks in his own way the chief political and social evils of his time. . . . Designedly fantastic in suggestion of details, Utopia is the work of a scholar who had read Plato's Republic, and had his fancy quickened after reading Plutarch's account of Spartan life under Lycurgus. Beneath the veil of an ideal communism, into which there has been worked some witty extravagance, there lies a noble English argument. -- from Henry Morley's Introduction The novel was first published in 1516 in Latin. The book is a frame narrative primarily depicting a fictional island society and its religious, social and political customs.