Utopias of the British Enlightenment

Author/Contributor(s):	Claeys, Gregory
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Date:	07/07/1994
Binding:	Paperback
Condition:	NEW

This collection of eighteenth-century British utopias shows how the image of the ideal society was used as a form of social criticism, particularly as a means of focusing on ideas of progress and commercial development. The texts chosen reveal important trends in the development of liberal rights theories, of proto-socialist concepts of property distribution, and of conservative notions of the ideal hierarchical community. The introduction examines their relationship to the key issues and developments in the political thought of the period.