Thomas More’s Utopia

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biographer. Two years afterwards King Richard III was slain in
the Battle of the Roses. Henry VII later became king (The World Book Encyclopedia 802).
During the reign of Henry VII More grew into manhood. His father was John More, a barrister of Lincoln’s Inn. After schooling at St. Anthony’s he lived with John Morton, Archbishop of Canterbury (Comptons Encyclopedia 582).
Morton recognized the talents of his young page and advised him to go to Oxford to study. He became a lawyer and a scholar in Latin and Greek language in 1494, through which he would meet a man by the name of Desiderius Erasmus. He met More in 1499 on a visit to England and the two soon became good friends. They worked together during these fruitful years, translating and encouraging each others literacy activities. The two of them would become humanists and study the text of the bible. It was at More’s house that Erasmus wrote the Praise of Folly. Erasmus tells us in lectures he wrote that More ...

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The year 1515 was a turning point in More’s life. The King gave him his first commission. He then wrote the most famous of all his works, Utopia, written in 1516. He was sent to negotiate some treaties of King Henry VII. The months it took to negotiate, More wrote Utopia. The work is a dialogue between More, Peter Gilles, and a strange traveler from distant lands, one Raphael Hythodaye, a companion of Amerigo Vespucci. The three discuss economic and social problems with particular reference to England, and Hythodaye delivers a realistic account of corruption that permeates society (Collier’s Encyclopedia 542).
Utopia is an island shaped like a half moon. It is five hundred ...

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