Utopia
Thomas More · Ralph Robinson
In 1516 Thomas More, lawyer and under-sheriff of London, published at Louvain a small Latin book on «the best state of a commonwealth and the new isle called Utopia», and gave the world a word. It begins in an Antwerp garden, with talk of thieves hanged by the score while sheep «eat up men», and ends on an island where no one owns anything, gold is used for chamber pots and chains, and every faith is tolerated. Here in Ralph Robinson’s first English translation (London 1551), in the English of the Book of Common Prayer, with the Latin text of Basel 1518 in 293 paragraphs linked both ways, the letters and verses of Erasmus, Budé, Giles and Busleyden, the woodcut map and the Utopian alphabet, and registers of persons, Utopian names and old words. Edited by Bernhard Trebuch. Reading sample: Robinson’s dedication, More’s letter to Giles and the beginning of the First Book.
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