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THREE EARLY MODERN UTOPIAS
Utopias have existed almost since the beginnings of literature, but
some eras have produced more utopian literature than others. The
early modern period was one such time. The geographical and scien-
tific discoveries of the age, as well as its profound social conflicts,
provided a context in which the fusion of ideas about the ideal with
representations of ‘other’ fictitious communities became a natural
mode of conceiving how things might be different in a world else-
where. But early modern utopias rarely offered ‘simple’ solutions to
the problems that they confronted. Their writers frequently offered
representations of other worlds not in order to answer questions
about the social, cultural, and political mores of their own times, but
rather to raise the issues in their readers’ minds. In other words
very few early modern utopias are merely blueprints for ideal so-
cieties: their meanings emerge only through the juxtaposition of the
utopia represented with the writer’s own world. In different ways
this is true of all three of the utopias reprinted in this volume:
Thomas More’s Utopia (1516), which addresses the social problems
of early sixteenth-century England; Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis
(1627), which foregrounds England’s shortcomings in the nurture
of scientific endeavour; and Henry Neville’s The Isle of Pines (1668),
which engages with issues of colonialism and sexual propriety.
These three texts illustrate the range of the utopian imagination in
the early modern period, and the different uses to which it could be
put.
Susan Bruce is Lecturer in the English Department of Keele
University. She is the author of articles on More, Bacon, Rochester,
and Swift, and the editor of The Icon Critical Guide to King Lear.
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THE WORLD’S CLASSICS
THOMAS MORE
Utopia
FRANCIS BACON
New Atlantis
HENRY NEVILLE
The Isle of Pines
Edited with an Introduction and Notes by
SUSAN BRUCE
3
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Introduction, Note on the Texts, Select Bibliographies, Chronologies © Susan Bruce 1999
Chronology of Francis Bacon © Brian Vickers 1996
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CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Introduction ix
Note on the Texts xliii
Select Bibliography xlv
Chronologies of the Authors liii
THOMAS MORE, UTOPIA
translated by Ralph Robinson 1
The First Book of the New Island of Utopia 10
The Second Book of the New Island of Utopia 49
Appendix. Ancillary Materials From Other Early Editions of
‘Utopia’ 134
FRANCIS BACON, NEW ATLANTIS 149
HENRY NEVILLE, THE ISLE OF PINES 187
Explanatory Notes 213
Glossary 243
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Like other editors, I have consulted other editions of the texts in
producing my own. I am especially indebted to J. H. Lupton’s and to
J. Churton Collins’s editions of Utopia, to J. Weinberger’s and Brian
Vickers’s editions of New Atlantis and to Worthington Chauncey
Ford’s edition of The Isle of Pines for the Club of Odd Volumes. Many
individuals have assisted more directly in the production of this
volume, and to all of them I am very grateful. Neil Rhodes encour-
aged me, some years ago now, to propose the anthology to Oxford
World’s Classics. John Rogers assisted me with one of the explanat-
ory notes to Utopian attitudes to the more obscure aspects of medi-
eval philosophy. Dima Abdulrahim helped me on those occasions
where expertise in Arabic was required; Marguerite Palmer helped
me to ascertain the meaning of a Dutch sentence. Sue Wiseman was
kind enough to help me to track down early versions of Neville’s
pamphlets; Mishtooni Bose helped me to find a translation of a
letter. Tim Lustig has been supportive in many different ways
throughout the time I have been working on this anthology, as have
Daniel and Luke Lustig-Bruce, in their inimitable and much
appreciated fashions. Both Sue and Tim also read and commented
on my introduction to The Isle Of Pines, as did Roger Pooley and
Julie Sanders; Bridget Orr was kind enough to listen to some early
ideas. I should also like to thank Judith Luna of Oxford University
Press for her efficiency and helpfulness, the copy-editor, Jeff New,
for his careful reading of the typescript, and for his excellent sugges-
tions for improvements, some of which I have incorporated in the
notes on the texts, and Brian Vickers, editor of the Oxford Authors
Francis Bacon, for allowing me to base the text of the New Atlantis,
and the chronology of Francis Bacon, on his edition. Perhaps my
greatest debt of gratitude is due to Alison Sharrock of the Classics
Department of Keele University, who extended her time (with
extraordinary generosity) in helping me with classical allusions in
the New Atlantis, and more especially Utopia, and whose suggestions
for new connotations of ‘Abraxa’, ‘Philarch’, and ‘Syphogrant’ I
have included in the notes to Utopia.
vii
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INTRODUCTION
I
Historical Origins: The Early Modern Utopia and
the ‘Age of Discovery’
All three of the utopias reprinted in this volume engage at some level
with a discourse of origins. Just as Utopus civilizes his people, bring-
ing them to ‘that excellent perfection . . . wherein they now go
beyond all the people of the world’ (p. 50), so Solamona, in Bacon’s
New Atlantis, acts as the original ‘lawgiver’ of his nation, Bensalem,
devising for his people the edicts which will regulate their behaviour
in perpetuity and thus establish Bensalem as the wisest––and hence
in Bacon’s terms the most powerful––nation in the world. George
Pine too, at least on the surface of Neville’s short narrative,
endeavours before he dies to lay the foundations (however un-
specific) of good government, appointing one ruler and ‘exhorting
him to use justice and sincerity’ (p. 201) among his peers. And just
as each text represents the genesis of its utopia in the form of an
originating individual whose legacy persists in the very nature of the
community that he ruled, so too each is insistent on the separation of
its nation from its immediate neighbours, and from the rest of the
known world. The Isle of Pines is isolated in terms of its geo-
graphical position; similarly removed from Europe in geographical
terms, Utopia and Bensalem are further distanced from the outside
world by the respective actions of their founding fathers. Utopus
turns what was a peninsula into an island, severing Utopia from the
mainland in an action which has been read as a kind of birth fantasy;1
Solamona establishes laws forbidding the entry of strangers and
restricting the travel of native Bensalemites, whose visits to other
lands are henceforth strictly regulated by the state.
In one very obvious respect the isolation of early modern utopias
fulfils a necessary narrative function. The writers of such texts
felt impelled to offer a plausible explanation for the fact that the
1 See Louis Marin, Utopiques: jeux d’espaces (Paris: Minuit, 1973), 145–6.
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