Utopia (Burnet translation)

Thomas More (1478 to 1535) was an English lawyer, writer and statesman who rose to become Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, and who was executed in 1535 after refusing to accept the king's claim to be head of the church. He wrote Utopia in Latin, and it was published in 1516. The title is a pun on two Greek words, meaning both no place and a good place.

The book is built as a conversation. In the first part, More and his friends discuss the troubles of the age, including poverty and crime, and the unwillingness of rulers to listen to wise counsel. In the second, Raphael Hythloday describes the island of Utopia, where property is held in common, where religion is tolerated and where the citizens are educated and well governed. Whether More meant this as a model, a joke or a provocation has been debated for five centuries.

This recording uses the English translation by Gilbert Burnet (1643 to 1715), who later became Bishop of Salisbury. It is divided into twelve parts, including the introduction, and has a running time of just under four hours. It is read by volunteers of LibriVox. For readers of political philosophy and of utopian and dystopian literature, it is the essential starting point, and also a book that is lively enough to be enjoyed in its own right. Burnet's translation reads as English of the late seventeenth century, with long and flowing sentences, and gives the book a pleasantly old-fashioned flavor. The ideas, though, are as lively as ever, and listeners can compare More's imaginary island with the proposals of later thinkers.