Four Early Modern Utopias: Utopia, New Atlantis, The Isle of Pines, The Blazing World

In one volume, four of the most influential and interesting early works of utopia fiction. Included in this volume: Thomas More’s Utopia, originally published in 1516, which is one of the most influential works of political theory of its time. A work of socio-political satirical fiction, it depicts a fictional island society and its religious, social, and political customs. The version used in this volume is based on the unattributed translation originally published in Ideal Commonwealths in 1892. Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis, an unfinished novel originally published in 1626 that depicts a mythical island, Bensalem, which is discovered by the crew of a European ship after they are lost in the Pacific Ocean somewhere west of Peru — a society dedicated to scientific discovery and the pursuit of knowledge. Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines, a 1668 story about five shipwrecked castaways — a British man, George Pine, and four women — who create a new world on an island of near endless abundance. While at first seeming to be a idyllic paradise, it quickly reveals itself to be dystopian, demonstrating how quickly mankind can devolve into primitive and unproductive state. Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, originally published in 1666, is a one of the earliest works of proto-science fiction and one of the only early modern works of utopian literature by a woman author. The Blazing World is the story of a young woman who discovers an entire new world that is only accessible through the North Pole, where she becomes empress of a kingdom of talking animals and eventually builds an army and plots the conquest of her home planet.