From Nowhere: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of our - Chris J. Young

36. Sarah Scott (1723–1795). A Description of Millenium Hall. London: T.
Carnan and F. Newbery, 1778.
First published in 1762, A Description of Millenium [sic] Hall was Sarah Scott’s most popular novel
and went through four editions by 1778, this being the fourth. Millenium Hall was particularly
notable for its description of a separatist retreat where women could enjoy considerable educational
opportunities, and organize their lives largely without male assistance, with a resulting increase in
selflessness and cooperation. Some quarters of eighteenth-century European society experienced a
general increase in political and gender equality that was reflected in literary utopias, such as this
novel, where women are portrayed as having greater control over their lives. This is particularly
evident in later eighteenth-century works like Lady Mary Hamilton’s utopian work Munster Village,
and Mary Wollstonecraft’s treatise A Vindication for the Rights of Women asserting that women only
appear to be inferior to men because of the lack of educational opportunities available to them for
self-improvement.
37. Edmund Burke (1729–1797). A Vindication of Natural Society. London:
Printed for M. Cooper, 1756.
Edmund Burke is principally known for his political writings and his career as a politician. in 1756
he published his first work, A Vindication of Natural Society that contrasted ‘artificial’ or ‘political’
society with a simpler, happier ideal of the state of nature. A Vindication of Natural Society was
perhaps the first modern expression of rationalistic and individualistic anarchism. A satire on the
deism of Viscount Henry St. John Bolingbroke, Burke’s work challenges Bolingbroke’s views on
religion, civil society and government, reasoning that his arguments against revealed religion could
apply to all institutions. Although Burke attempted to write his work in imitation of Bolingbroke’s
style, his readers missed the point of the satire – a fact explicitly stated by Burke in the preface to
the second edition. William Godwin considered Burke’s treatise to be the first literary expression of
philosophical anarchism, and acknowledged its strong influence on the formation of his own beliefs
expressed in An Enquiry Concerning Political Justice in 1793.
From Nowhere: Utopian and Dystopian Visions of our Past, Present, and Future 55