Journey Through Utopia ― A Critical Examination of Imagined Worlds in Western Literature

Journey through Utopia is a richly detailed and critically compelling examination of utopian literature, beginning with Plato’s Republic and continuing through to Huxley’s Brave New World. Utopias have been penned with diverse intentions: some as pictures of an ideal society, some as blueprints for action, some, especially in times of severe censorship, as covert criticisms of existing conditions. Marie Louise Berneri exposes the dark shadow that lingers above most utopian works by emphasizing the intolerant and authoritarian nature of these visions, warning of the doom that awaits those foolish enough to put their trust in an ordered and regimented world. Journey through Utopia is a necessary companion, and in many cases an antidote, to imagined fictions from antiquity to the present.

Marie Louise Berneri (1918–1949) was an anarchist activist and author. She was involved with the short-lived publication, Revision, and was a member of the group that edited Revolt, War Commentary, and the Freedom newspaper. Matthew S. Adams is Lecturer in Politics, History and Communication at Loughborough University. He is the author of Kropotkin, Read, and theIntellectual History of British Anarchism. George Woodcock (1912–1995) was a Canadian writer of political biography and history, an anarchist thinker, an essayist, and literary critic.?Rhiannon Firth is Senior Research Officer in Sociology at the University of Essex. Her research interests include utopian political theory and anarchist social movements.