Samuel Butler

Sir Francis Bacon

William Morris

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