Utopias of the British Enlightenment

This is the first major collection of eighteenth-century British utopias. Seven tracts, spanning the century, show how the image of the ideal society was used as a form of social criticism, and particularly as a means of focussing on ideas of progress and commercial development. Radical and republican thinking about property ownership, social equality, and commerce and luxury - of particular relevance to the critique of ‘corruption’ in this period - coexists with nostalgic and conservative notions of the ideal hierarchical community. The introduction, which examines the relationship of these tracts to the political thought of the period, shows how issues and developments of key importance, from the debate surrounding the French Revolution to the origins of Romanticism and early socialism, are illuminated by an understanding of the utopian tradition.

• First major collection of British eighteenth-century utopias • Essential to an understanding of the political climate of the period • Of relevance to important later developments in political thought such as Romanticism and socialism

Introduction; The Island of Content; A Description of New Athens in Terra Australis Incognita; Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth; An Account of the First Settlement, Laws, Form of Government, and Police, of the Cessares, a People of South America; Memoirs of Planetes; The Commonwealth of Reason; Bruce’s Voyage to Naples.