Utopia

“The little gold book, as useful as it is amusing, about the best form of a state and about a new island of Utopia” is the most famous book by the outstanding English jurist, statesman, and humanist writer Thomas More (1478–1535). The first edition was prepared by Thomas More’s friend, the great thinker of the Renaissance Erasmus of Rotterdam, and it was published in 1516 in the Belgian city of Leuven. In the author’s homeland, the first English translation saw the light only in 1551—already after More’s execution and after the death of King Henry VIII, first the patron of the thinker and then his persecutor.