Four Island Utopias: Plato's Atlantis, Euhemeros' Panchaia, Iamboulos' Sun Island & Bacon's New Atlantis - Philosophical Classics for Book Clubs & Academic Studies

Curiously conceived collection of texts from ancient and modern times. The notion of an island, somewhere, with a superior civilization, is most famously presented in Thomas More's Utopia (1516), not included here (Francis Bacon's New Atlantis takes its place, with the explicit title drawn from Plato's Atlantis myth, also presented). Clay and Purvis provide, in an appendix, precursor texts from Homer's Odyssey (Odysseus as the first philosophical navigator wandering into exemplary other island-worlds), as well as the central Platonic texts on Atlantis and some less-known ancient followups. There is lots of introduction, perhaps even too much or not incisive enough. If you're interested in the history of utopian thought, this is well worth exploring.