Utopia

When I saw that Verso was going to publish an edition of Thomas More's UTOPIA with an Introduction by China Mieville and several essays by Ursula K. LeGuin I was instantly interested and I knew that I was going to have to read this. I love More's quirky essay and thought that this had a chance to be one of the more interesting editions of UTOPIA in print. It is with enormous regret that I have to say that I'm not a fan of this edition at all. Well, no, not "at all." I'm always interested in having any of China Mieville nonfiction, which I believe I might enjoy even more than his fiction. He is without any question one of the most intelligent SF writers of his generation and I found his essay quite interesting. Also, as someone of the far political far left I am always especially interested in seeing anything that Mieville has to say on anything even remotely political, which UTOPIA most assuredly is, even if its politics is not always easy to discern. And Ursula LeGuin is an American treasure. If the topic is "The Greatest American SF writer," hers is one of a few writers whose name goes on instantly, with no debate. Her DISPOSSESSED is as fine a dystopia as exists, which in combination with brilliance as a critic of SF makes her someone whose opinion always merits attention.So why only three stars? Well, it is Thomas More who lets us down. Or rather, the Thomas More presented here. I grasp that one of the point of having Mieville and LeGuin involved was to make UTOPIA as accessible as possible to a modern audience. Unfortunately to do this much of the prefatory material (though in some editions it is included as an appendix) that More clearly wanted to be a part of the text has been omitted. This is just very important material, both for its inherent interest (many will know of Peter Giles, to whom More addresses some of the material, and even more will know Erasmus of Rotterdam, to whom other bits area addressed - both would play a key role in publishing the book and in making marginal notations that have been reproduced in many if not most editions of UTOPIA, while Erasmus would further show his opinion by when publishing his own most famous work, IN PRAISE OF FOLLY, which was dedicated to More, who is also mentioned in the Latin title, since the word for "Folly" is spelled precisely the same way that "More" is spelled when Latinized). I owned three previous translations of UTOPIA, so I don't personally need a new translation, but how can make a general recommendation of this book for those who do need a first rate translation? On the other hand, I don't quite want to recommend against someone reading the outstanding material by Mieville and LeGuin. So let me make a qualified recommendation.First, if you need a very good edition of the text for a relatively small amount of money, it is very hard to beat the Cambridge University Press edition edited by George M. Logan and Robert M. Adams. You will very hard pressed to find a better edition of More's work at anywhere close to the same price. Given the several qualifications in the last two sentences, one might gather that I'm hinting that there is a better edition of More's book at a much greater price and one would be correct. The single best edition of any book that I have ever seen of a work translated into English just happens to be the volume from Yale's definitive edition of the complete works of Thomas More. I was able to find a reasonably priced copy that has been withdrawn from the Thomas Aquinas Library of Santa Paula, California. This is a work of scholarship - mainly in English - that has to be seen to be appreciated. It begins with a book-length essay by J. H. Hexter, one of the great Thomas more scholars of all time, followed by a very long additional essay by an equally great More scholar, Edward Surtz, followed by a definitive Latin text facing a celebrated English translation, followed by several hundred pages back matter. It truly is several classic works under one cover. If you ever intend to do an in depth, scholarly study of UTOPIA, you will need to consult this book, unless you are a lucky as I was to find one used. NOTE: Yale published a heavily abridged edition of this in paperback; to get everything that I just described you will need to find the hardback edition of Vol. 4 of the Yale Edition of the Work of Thomas More. I would include a product link but I am not confident that it would show the correct book (Amazon often has trouble with books that predate the ISBN - since this is a pendantic paragraph already, let me point that that adding "number" to ISBN would be redundant, since the "N" stands for "number").If you have the Cambridge translation already, or on the unlikely chance that you have the Yale 1965 hardback, then I would definitely recommend getting this Verso edition. I am actually a big believer of owning multiple editions of classic books. I own, for instance, four copies of Thomas Hobbes's LEVIATHAN, and still harbor vague hopes of someday owning a copy of the Clarendon edition edited by Noel Malcolm, and this is a book originally written in English (though with there was both another Enlgish edition and a Latin edition that differs from the English, which just royally messes with everything). How would I know that the Verso edition omits crucial material if I didn't already have an edition? I loved reading Mieville's Intro. And even if there was no Intro by Mieville, the essays by LeGuin would have been enough on their own to interest me in this. I know that this is a complex recommendation, but the truth is that it is hard to be simple with most great books. Take the translation by Edwin Curley of Spinoza's ETHICS, first published in Volume One of his two-volume translation of the complete works of Spinoza. Curley's is regarded as the standard English translation now. Penguin secured the rights of that translation for its edition, so that would mean that the Penguin is both the cheapest and the best? But many, though not all, regard Samuel Shirley's translation, reasonably priced on Hackett, as even better. So Shirley or Curley is the best? Except Shirley pointed out to Curley several places where his Princeton, Vol. 1/Penguin translation stood to be improved. Curley agreed, and he made many corrections in his translation, which to date is only available in a very expensive volume he edited for Princeton entitled A SPINOZA READER THE ETHICS AND OTHER WORKS. And to make this all even more deliciously complex, one of the editions of Hobbes that I mentioned above - and my personal favorite - was edited for Hackett by Edwin Curley. In praise of Moriae indeed?The point is, there are very few definitive this or definitive that where translations or scholarly editions are concerned, and since if you are more than moderately interested in UTOPIA or even Utopia (or Dystopia) Studies you will want/need more than one edition of Thomas More's great book, you might as well make this one of them. Even if you have a crackerjack translation of More, you will probably want to see what Mieville and LeGuin have to add to the discussion. I'm delighted to have and I even have that phone-book-sized edition of the book.

Save your money and purchase only More's "Utopia" without any introduction. It would be a much better read, and more educational, than this one by Verso.Thomas More had a wonderful and classic style of writing which is easy to read and understand. The introductions and essays added (for more money) in this Verso version detract rather than add to More's classic. I would go so far as to say they don't belong in the book at all since they have very little relevance to it.The original version of Thomas More's "Utopia" can be found for free - a much better choice and price without the political distractions of this book.

It was informative

I was pleased to see a 500the anniversary edition of Sir Thomas More's Utopia appear. I've had a copy of Utopia in my Tudor history book collection for a long time, so a reprint of that work, itself, was of minor interest to me. What I hoped for in this 500th anniversary reprint volume with added essays and texts was a good historical perspective on More and the times in which he wrote Utopia.There has been a great deal of expanded research and historical information gathered in recent decades about the era in which More lived and the preceding decades which laid the groundwork for More's base of knowledge and experience. Just the discovery of Richard III's burial site has garnered a great deal of information about the man who defeated Richard -- Henry VII -- and the foundation of the Tudor dynasty under which More lived. This was an incredibly dynamic era in which tremendous social change was taking place.More lived and wrote in Tudor England where the powerful Tudor monarchs also were responsible for great decreases in the power of the nobility while increasing the powers of Parliament. A long dynastic war was ended and peace and prosperity were given a chance. Commoners like More and Wolsey were elevated to positions of tremendous power not based on their bloodlines but on their abilities, education, and potential. New ways of thought were encouraged, with notables such as Erasmus in the court of Henry VIII with More. It was an era rich in new ways to shape the future, with - at the time More wrote Utopia - a vibrant young king on the throne willing to engage with, and enact, such ideas.It was this discussion, with research and analysis, I hoped to find in this 500th anniversary edition of More's Utopia. Instead the beginning and ending essays barely mentioned More or his Utopia, and did not discuss its historical context. Instead they were - the introductory piece in particular - long diatribes of the author's own dissatisfaction with the world of today. Very disappointing, with tediously flowery writing in the introductory piece. For the pieces added to Utopia, points go to Ursula Le Guin for the superior writing ability, style, and interesting content.

Fiz o pedido ontem e, indo contra a previsão de quase 7 dias, o produto chegou hoje. Veio inteiro, de acordo com o esperado.