Utopia
Thomas More's Utopia (1516), written in Latin, is a foundational work of political philosophy — and the book that gave its name to the whole genre of the ideal society. In Book I the traveller Raphael Hythloday indicts the ills of contemporary Europe — enclosure, poverty, and the death penalty for theft; in Book II he describes the island commonwealth of Utopia, where property is held in common and the citizens live by reason. At once a serious proposal and a playful satire (its very name means “Nowhere”), it has shaped political imagination for five centuries. This is Gilbert Burnet's 1684 translation.
Translation
Gilbert Burnet (1684)