Utopia, Thomas More
Utopia, Thomas More
List: $7.49 | Sale: $5.25
Club: $3.74

Utopia

Author: Thomas More

Narrator: Barnaby Edwards

Unabridged: 4 hr 44 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: SNR Audio

Published: 07/31/2025

Categories: Fiction, Classic


Synopsis

'For if you suffer your people to be ill-educated and their manners to be corrupted from their infancy, and then punish them for those crimes to which their first education disposed them, what else is to be concluded from this, but that you first make thieves and then punish them.' A classic work of socio-political satire and still widely read and studied to this day, Utopia sees a fictional traveller describe an ideal society; a vehicle for More to highlight the flaws of sixteenth-century Europe. First published in 1516, Utopia is a political and philosophical satire presented as a dialogue between More and the traveller Raphael Hythlodaeus. Raphael recounts his time visiting the island of Utopia, where private property ceases to exist, all citizens work, and the laws promote equality, education and religious tolerance. Through this imagined society, More indirectly challenges the injustices of European politics, and cleverly reflects on the meaning of justice, governance and what it takes to create a 'perfect' society. Thomas More (1478 – 1535) was an English philosopher, statesman, lawyer and author. Venerated in the Catholic Church, More served Henry VIII as Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. Today, he is noted for being a Renaissance humanist, and is best known for his political work, Utopia.

About Thomas More

Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), was placed at number thirty-seven in the BBC’s poll of the “100 Greatest Britons.” An English statesman, lawyer, humanist, saint, poet, and author, he was one of the most versatile and talented men of his age. He held important government positions, including serving as lord chancellor. Though he had been a long-time friend of King Henry VIII, he was a staunch Catholic and could not accept the king’s demand that all subjects acknowledge the king above the pope, resulting in his execution in 1535. With his writing of Utopia, he takes his place with the most eminent humanists of the Renaissance.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Henry on November 07, 2024

As the centuries roll by, more and more books are written about Utopian societies that should be established on Earth, but the few actually tried... fail. Sir Thomas or Saint Thomas More, depending on your affiliation, Utopia , ( greatly influenced by Plato's The Republic) is a satire about tumultuo......more

Goodreads review by Leonard on April 08, 2021

The term “utopia” is Thomas More’s most enduring invention. Its meaning is not completely clear, however: is utopia a good place (εὖ-τόπος) or a no place or nowhere (οὐ-τόπος)? Probably both: in a sense, a utopia is a place “too good to be true”. Socrates described the first utopia in Plato’s Republ......more

Goodreads review by Paul on February 09, 2017

Thomas More's life blah blah feudalism, in which virtually all power resided with enormous white ducks while the peasants had to wear roller skates even in bed. The late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries blah blah Renaissance, a flowering of platform heel shoes and massive shagging blah blah I......more

Goodreads review by James on May 20, 2020

Review FYI - Read years ago, wrote review in college... Thomas More was the first to coin the word “utopia.” More was the son of a court judge, and a page to Archbishop Morton throughout his youth in London. He was profoundly affected not only by these two great gentlemen, but also by the......more

Goodreads review by Jon on May 02, 2025

This is another book that I had to read because the title become a word in English...I liked the fact that Thomas More was looking for solutions; solutions we are still looking for in this age of globalization - when every country has their own utopian vision. Perhaps that is the 'utopian paradox' -......more