Utopia. A community or society possessing highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities. It may be a dream, but it's a dream that has inspired writers for thousands of years. Plato's "Republic" may be the very first utopia presented to a mass audience, but Thomas More coined the term with his 1516 book Utopia (included here), which describes a fictional island society in the Atlantic Ocean. The term (and its antonym, dystopia) quickly entered the English language. And here are 19 other works, famous and not, featuring utopias and dystopias...works by Samuel Butler, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Anna Bowman Dodd, William Morris, Sir Francis Bacon, and many others. Included are:
EREWHON, by Samuel Butler
MOVING THE MOUNTAIN, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
HERLAND, by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
EQUALITY, by Edward Bellamy
CAESAR'S COLUMN, by Ignatius Donnelly
THE REPUBLIC OF THE FUTURE, by Anna Bowman Dodd
A CRYSTAL AGE, by W. H. Hudson
A TRAVELER FROM ALTRURIA, by W. D. Howells
FREELAND: A SOCIAL ANTICIPATION, by Dr. Theodor Hertzka
MIZORA: A PROPHECY, by Mary E. Bradley Lane
SOLARIS FARM, by Milan C. Edson
LOOKING BACKWARD, by Edward Bellamy
SOME PICTURES OF A SOCIALIST FUTURE, by Eugene Richter
UTOPIA, by Thomas More
THE COMMONWEALTH OF OCEANA, by James Harrington
THE NEW ATLANTIS, by Sir Francis Bacon
THE BLAZING WORLD, by Margaret Cavendish
CHRISTIANOPOLIS, by Johannes Valentinus Andreae
THE CITY OF THE SUN, by Tommaso Campanella
