Author: Thomas More

Utopia appeared in Latin in 1516 and handed the language a word its author may have meant as a joke, since the name means no-place, and readers have never settled how much of the island's common property and six-hour working day More actually endorsed. He was a lawyer who rose to Speaker of the Commons and then Lord Chancellor under Henry VIII, wrote ferocious polemics against Tyndale and the reformers, and was close enough to Erasmus that In Praise of Folly is dedicated to him. He refused the oath acknowledging the king as head of the church in England, was convicted largely on the word of a single witness, and was beheaded in 1535. Rome canonised him four centuries later.