''A Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria'' is a work of
utopian fiction
Utopian and dystopian fiction are genres of speculative fiction that explore social and political structures. Utopian fiction portrays a setting that agrees with the author's ethos, having various attributes of another reality intended to appeal to ...
, published in England in 1641. It carried the name of
Samuel Hartlib
Samuel Hartlib or Hartlieb (c. 1600 – 10 March 1662)
M. Greengrass, "Hartlib, Samuel (c. 1600–1662)", ''Oxford D ...
, who published it, but is now attributed to
Gabriel Plattes
Gabriel Plattes (c.1600–1644) was an English writer on agriculture and science, and also now recognised as the author of the utopian work '' Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria'', often attributed to Samuel Hartlib under whose name it ...
. A short text of fifteen pages, it reads, according to
Amy Boesky
Amy Boesky is an American author and a professor of English at Boston College.
Life
Born in Detroit, Boesky studied her undergraduate degree at Harvard College before completing a M.Phil in Renaissance English at the University of Oxford. After ...
, like a political address, and it was explicitly framed as an address to Parliament.
It is written as a dialogue, and is in the tradition of the ''
Utopia
A utopia ( ) typically describes an imaginary community or society that possesses highly desirable or nearly perfect qualities for its members. It was coined by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book ''Utopia (book), Utopia'', describing a fictional ...
'' of
Thomas More
Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), venerated in the Catholic Church as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, judge, social philosopher, author, statesman, and noted Renaissance humanist. He also served Henry VIII as Lord ...
— Macaria is an island mentioned in ''Utopia'' — and the ''
New Atlantis
''New Atlantis'' is an incomplete utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon, published posthumously in 1626. It appeared unheralded and tucked into the back of a longer work of natural history, ''Sylva Sylvarum'' (forest of materials). In ''New Atlan ...
'' of
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
.
Hugh Trevor-Roper
Hugh Redwald Trevor-Roper, Baron Dacre of Glanton (15 January 1914 – 26 January 2003) was an English historian. He was Regius Professor of Modern History at the University of Oxford.
Trevor-Roper was a polemicist and essayist on a range of ...
takes it to be an important formulation of the ultimate political ambitions of Hartlib and his followers (and in particular
John Dury
John Dury (1596 in Edinburgh – 1680 in Kassel) was a Scottish Calvinist minister and an intellectual of the English Civil War period. He made efforts to re-unite the Calvinist and Lutheran wings of Protestantism, hoping to succeed when he moved ...
), in the form of a reformed Christian society and
welfare state
A welfare state is a form of government in which the state (or a well-established network of social institutions) protects and promotes the economic and social well-being of its citizens, based upon the principles of equal opportunity, equitabl ...
. It covers the issues of economic development, taxation and education. Much of the content drew on
Henry Robinson's ''Englands Safety'' from earlier in the same year.
[Robert Zaller, '']Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
The ''Dictionary of National Biography'' (''DNB'') is a standard work of reference on notable figures from British history, published since 1885. The updated ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (''ODNB'') was published on 23 September ...
'', article Robinson, Henry (bap. 1605, d. 1673).
Notes
External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria
1641 books
Utopian fiction