Utopia

"The Golden Little Book, as Useful as it is Entertaining, on the Best Arrangement of a State and on the New Island of Utopia" is the most famous book by the outstanding English lawyer, statesman, and humanist writer Thomas More (1478—1535). Its first edition was prepared by Thomas More’s friend, the great thinker of the Renaissance, Erasmus of Rotterdam, and was published in 1516 in the Belgian city of Leuven. In the author’s homeland, the first English translation appeared only in 1551—after More’s execution and the death of King Henry VIII, first the thinker’s patron and later his persecutor.