| Description |
xli, 305 pages ; 22 cm |
| Series |
Cambridge texts in the history of political thought |
|
Cambridge texts in the history of political thought.
|
| Contents |
[Anon]: The island of content:/ or, A new Paradise discovered (1709) -- [Anon]: A description of New Athens in Terra Australis Incognita (1720) -- David Hume: Idea of a perfect commonwealth (1752) -- [James Burgh]: An account of the first settlement, laws. form of government, and police, of the Cessares, a people of South America (1764) -- [Thomas Northmore]: Memoirs of Planetes, or a sketch of the laws and mannerers of Makar (1795) -- William Hodgson: The commonwealth of reason (1795) -- [Anon]: Bruce's voyage to Naples (1802) |
| Summary |
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 sets these tracts in a wider context of similar texts, examines their relationship to the political thought of the period, and 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 |
| Analysis |
Great Britain |
|
Utopias History |
| Notes |
Bibliography: pxxxiii-xxxv. - Includes index |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages xxxiii-xxxvii) and index |
| Subject |
Utopian socialism -- Great Britain -- History -- 18th century.
|
| Genre/Form |
Utopian fiction.
|
| Author |
Claeys, Gregory, editor of compilation
|
| LC no. |
93026683 |
| ISBN |
0521430844 (hc) |
|
9780521455909 (paperback) |
|
