Thomas More’s Utopia remains one of the most famous books ever written. Within decades of its publication in Latin in December 1516, Utopia had gone through several editions and was published in almost every European vernacular.
It is also one of history’s most enigmatic books. No one seems to be able to work out quite what More—an elusive man him- self—was up to in writing it. These two aspects of the book—its popularity and its mystery—may be linked; after all, everyone likes a good puzzle.
And everyone likes a good debate. Utopia, the tale of a com- monwealth united by common property, remains divisive. Is it a prescriptive programme for social reform? A dystopic portrait of totalitarian control? Or perhaps nothing more than the fanci- ful expression of an unstable mind? At stake is both our view of More himself and the very value of “utopian” thinking, a genre of writing and theorising which takes its name from More’s 500-year-old text—celebrated this year with a new edition and a series of exhibitions.