Utopia (Everyman's Library) - Softcover

More Saint 1478-1535, Sir Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0460874314 ISBN 13: 9780460874311

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group, 1994

Synopsis

Dreams come true in the conversation between Thomas More and Ralph Hythloday, the imaginary traveler of strange lands. The Utopia that emerges from his descriptions proves to be far more real and practical than the impossible fairy tale world that h as grown up around it since More's conversation was first published. Unlike England, with its terrible conventions of wealth and endemic crime, the island of Utopia lacks both private property and tyranny.

About this title

Review:

The Life of Thomas More is Peter Ackroyd's biography--from baptism to beheading--of the lawyer who became a saint. More, a noted humanist whose friendship with Erasmus and authorship of Utopia earned him great fame in Europe, succeeded Cardinal Wolsey as Lord Chancellor of London at the time of the English Reformation. In 1535, More was martyred for his refusal to support Henry VIII's divorce and break with Rome. Ackroyd's biography is a masterpiece in several senses. Perhaps most importantly, he corrects the mistaken impression that Robert Bolt's A Man for All Seasons has given two generations of theater and film audiences: More was not, as Bolt's drama would have us believe, a civil disobedient who put his conscience above the law. Ackroyd explains that "conscience was not for More an individual matter." Instead, it was derived from "the laws of God and of reason." If the greatest justice in this book is analytic, however, its greatest joys are descriptive. Ackroyd brings 16th-century London to life for his readers--an exotic world where all of life is enveloped by the church: "As the young More made his way along the lanes and thoroughfares, there was the continual sound of bells." --Michael Joseph Gross

Book Description:

Thomas More's Utopia is one of the supreme achievements of Renaissance humanism. His complex and ironic account of an imaginary communist society has not only given rise to the genre of utopian fiction but has been an inspiration to generations of political reformers.

About this edition

• Publisher: Orion Publishing Group
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0460874314
• ISBN 13: 9780460874311
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 440