British · b. 1478
Sir Thomas More was an English statesman, humanist, and saint, author of Utopia, the work that gave its name to the entire genre of imagined ideal societies.
Sir Thomas More was a leading Renaissance humanist, lawyer, and statesman who rose to become Lord Chancellor of England under Henry VIII.
His most famous work, Utopia (1516), describes an imaginary island society organized on rational and communal principles, coining the word “utopia” and founding a whole literary and political tradition of imagined ideal worlds; it remains a subtle, much-debated blend of satire, philosophy, and social critique. More was executed in 1535 for refusing to accept Henry VIII’s break with Rome, and was later canonized as a saint.
More is remembered as a brilliant humanist thinker and a man of conscience, and Utopia endures as a foundational text of political imagination.
by Thomas More
A dialogue in which the traveller Raphael Hythloday describes the island of Utopia — a society with communal property, religious tolerance, and rational social organisation. Written in Latin by Thomas More in 1516, the book gave the word 'utopia' (no-place) to all subsequent thinking about ideal societies.
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