The English diplomat and lord chancellor Sir Thomas More (1477/78-1535) published his dialogue on the philosophy of the state in 1516. The full title is A most pleasant, fruitful, and witty work of the best state of a public weal, and of the new isle called Utopia.

The work looks at the ideal form of the interplay between morality and politics in a state, and More describes a new society which he considers to be almost perfect.

It is not entirely clear how serious the ideas on morality and politics presented in Utopia were meant to be taken.

More's far-sighted ideas may be a pipe dream, and they were not intended as a programme for the revolutionary transformation of the prevailing society. This work is an early literary example of a futuristic social model.

Prechtl painted sixteen "contemporary" pictures for the 1986 Büchergilde Gutenberg edition of Utopia.