With the publication of Utopia (1516), Thomas More introduced into the English language not only a new word, but a new way of thinking about the gulf between what ought to be and what is. Utopia is at once a scathing analysis of the shortcomings of his own society, a realistic suggestion for an alternative mode of social organization, and a satire on unrealistic idealism. Enormously influential, it remains a challenging as well as a playful text. This edition reprints Ralph Robinson's 1556 translation from More's original Latin together with letters and illustrations that accompanied early editions of Utopia." "Bacon's New Atlantis (1627) offers a fictional illustration of the ideal role that science should play in the modern society. Neville's The Isle of Pines (1668), an extraordinary fable and a precursor of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe, is forthright in confronting sexual, racial, and colonialist anxieties. Together these texts illustrate the diversity of the early modern utopian imagination, as well as the different purposes to which it could be put.