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Books Like Utopia
Best books to read after Utopia by Thomas More
Readers who love Utopia are drawn to its combination of the founding work of the utopian tradition, More's humanist irony (the name 'utopia' puns on both 'good place' and 'no place'), the contrast between the ideal commonwealth and 16th century European reality, and the biographical shadow of More's later execution by Henry VIII. They want works that deal with the ideal society, political satire, and the long tradition of utopian and dystopian fiction that More's coinage inaugurated.
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Buy on AmazonGulliver's Travels
by Jonathan Swift
The greatest satirical utopia in the tradition More established — Swift's Lemuel Gulliver visits societies (Brobdingnag's rational giants, the Houyhnhnms' equine rationality) that serve as satirical mirrors for European society's failures; the most important work in the tradition of the voyage to an ideal commonwealth that Utopia inaugurated.
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Buy on AmazonThe Praise of Folly
by Erasmus
The companion humanist satire from More's closest friend — Erasmus wrote The Praise of Folly while staying at More's house, and the two works are the twin pillars of Northern humanist satire; reading both together reveals the ironic tradition within which Utopia was written.
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Buy on AmazonNew Atlantis
by Francis Bacon
The scientific utopia in the same tradition — Bacon's unfinished account of the island of Bensalem, organized around scientific knowledge and the House of Solomon, is the direct heir to More's Utopia in the tradition of the ideal commonwealth; it shows how the humanist utopian vision transformed into the scientific-progressive utopia of the Enlightenment.
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Buy on AmazonThe Republic
by Plato
The classical predecessor that More was directly in dialogue with — Plato's dialogue describing the ideal city-state organized by philosopher-kings is the most important predecessor to Utopia; More's dialogue form, his use of a traveller to describe an ideal society, and his communal property all echo Plato.
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Buy on AmazonNineteen Eighty-Four
by George Orwell
The dystopia that stands in direct opposition to the Utopian tradition More founded — where More imagines the ideal commonwealth, Orwell imagines the ultimate nightmare state; reading both together reveals how the utopian imagination contains the seeds of its own critique.
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Buy on AmazonNews from Nowhere
by William Morris
The Victorian socialist utopia most directly in More's tradition — Morris's narrator wakes in a future England organized around craft, beauty, and communal property (the direct continuation of More's 'no private ownership') and is given a tour of the ideal society by its contented inhabitants.
- 7
Buy on AmazonBrave New World
by Aldous Huxley
The dystopia that inverts More's utopian assumptions — where More's Utopia organizes society for virtue and human flourishing, Huxley's World State organizes it for stability and pleasure at the cost of freedom and meaning; the satirical counterpoint to every utopian ideal in the tradition More founded.
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Buy on AmazonThe Life of Thomas More
by Peter Ackroyd
The biography that illuminates Utopia's irony — Ackroyd's account of More's life, his friendship with Erasmus, his service to Henry VIII, and his execution for refusing to compromise on principle reveals the biographical context that makes Utopia's vision of a humane commonwealth so poignant and so complexly ironic.
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