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Christianopolis by Johann Valentin Andreae (Germany, 1619)    
As told by the survivor of a shipwreck, Christianoplis is the capital city of a distant island, where the citizens use no money or own no property; and are thus all on an equal basis economically and socially. Houses, furniture, food, and clothing are provided by the state without any discrimination, children of school age are reared by the community, and everyone shares equally in work in the fields and in the towns (depending on their aptitudes) as well as in the home.

Civitas Solis (City of the Sun) by Tommaso Campanella (Italy, 1623)    
The island of Taprobane is an idyllic place where property is communal and there is no money. Labour is equally shared, resulting in a four-hour working day (upping the ante from More). On Taprobane, slavery has been abolished, but women are considered a community resource, with scientific control of breeding. Science education is stressed above all else, and the rulers are men of superior intelligence, similar to Plato’s philosopher-kings.

The New Atlantis by Sir Francis Bacon (England, 1624)    
On Bacon’s putative Pacific island, the common good is sought through learning and justice, especially though scientific knowledge. Unusually for utopias of the time, a love of finery and jewellery is encouraged. The book was unfortunately unfinished and Bacon’s ideas on society and government are not detailed.

The Commonwealth of Oceana by James Harrington (England, 1656)    
Oceana is an idealized England, described in great detail in an attempt to influence the government of Cromwell. Among his ideas are limits of the holding of land, rules for the distribution of land, and the rotation of one third of the ruling senate by ballot each year, so that the same individuals do not hold onto power for too long.

The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish (England, 1666)    
The only known work of utopian fiction by a 17th Century woman, Blazing World is a fanciful depiction of a satirical, utopian kingdom in another world (complete with different stars in the sky), which can be reached via the North Pole. A young woman from our world is shipwrecked on the Blazing World where she is made Empress and uses her power to ensure that it is free of war, religious division and unfair sexual discrimination.

The Fable of the Bees by Bernard Mandeville (England, 1714)    
Subtitled “Private Vices, Publick Benefits”, this works consists of a poem and an extensive prose commentary. In it, de Mandeville compares society to a bee hive where the behaviour of the bees, although individually selfish, aggregates to a kind of common good. His analogy is with the increasingly free enterprise system in existence in England in his day.

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift (England, 1726)    
Swift’s most famous satirical work, the book is actually in four parts, only the first of which deals with the traveller Gulliver being shipwrecked and imprisoned in Lilliput, a land of tiny but aggressive people, which Swift uses to satirize the court of King George I. He is then stranded in Brobdingnag, among a people as giant as the Lilliputians were small, where he tries to justify European society to his captors. Next, he is rescued by the flying island of Laputa, where the inhabitants devote themselves to music and mathematics but are unable to use these for any practical ends. Finally, he is marooned in the land the Houyhnhnms, a race of graceful and intelligent horses, who rule over a lesser species of Yahoos (deformed and bestial humans). Gulliver concludes that there is no such thing as an ideal form of government - each has its pros and cons - but that his own English model is far from perfect itself.

Candide by Voltaire (France, 1759)    
Subtitled “L’Optimisme” (often rendered in English as “All for the Best”), this is a satirical novel which aims to parody Leibniz’s assertion that “all is for the best in the best of all possible worlds”. The main character Candide stumbles upon a secluded and idyllic city in South America called El Dorado, where the streets are paved with gold and precious stones, and where poverty is non-existent. The city has no organized government or religion, and crime, courts and prisons are unknown, and yet everyone lives in harmony and equality. Candide compares the city’s advanced educational system, beautiful architecture and peaceful and cultured way of life with the rapacious and sordid Europe he comes from.

L’An 2440 (The Year 2440) by Louis-Sébastien Mercier (France, 1771)    
Subtitled “Rêve s’il en fut jamais” (“A dream if ever there was one”), this work describes a man’s dream of a utopian future after a discussion of the injustices of contemporary Paris life. In 2440, Paris has reorganized its public spaces, its justice system and its impractical fashions, and there is no longer a need for religion, armies, foreign trade, slavery, taxes, prostitutes and beggars. Coffee, tea and tobacco are also conspicuously absent, as are dancing masters and pastry chefs.

Supplement to Bougainville’s “Voyage” by Denis Diderot (France, 1772)    
Diderot’s book makes a case for the simple, natural ways of a South Sea Island culture as reported by Bougainville, a French explorer, and the European lifestyle is discredited in comparison. Communal property and complete sexual freedom are the mainstays of their philosophy, although few details of government, law and the economy are given.