MORE, Sir Thomas.

by Sir Thomas More

£3,250 · Offered by Sokol Books

.Fifth English edition of Sir Thomas More s Utopia, the second Alsop edition of Ralph Robinson s English translation, first published 1551, dedicated by the publisher Bernard Alsop to Cresacre More (1572-1649), the author s great-grandson and biographer. This copy has excellent Quaker provenance, being associated with the founders of Clarks footwear... . . ..Utopia is certainly the most famous work of English humanism of the sixteenth century. Taking the form of a dialogue between scholars and diplomats meeting in Antwerp, it describes the journey of the Raphael Hythlodaeus to the fictional island of Utopia in the New World. A satire on the politics and mores of his own day, More s Utopia has been hugely influential and inspired the genre of utopian fiction, though in his own day he was perhaps better known for his translations of Lucian s satires, with Erasmus. Utopia was published in the great year of Erasmian reform, when the new enlightenment seemed about to carry all before it It was written as a tract for the times, to rub in the lesson of Erasmus; it inveighs against the new statesmanship of all-powerful autocracy and the new economics of large enclosures and the destruction of common-field agriculture, just as it pleads for religious tolerance and universal education (PMM, p. 28). More s true intentions in writing Utopia have been the subject of much debate, especially regarding his opinions on traditional Catholicism, monarchy, and the ownership of private property a

• Binding: Hardcover

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