Known primarily for the section on Salomons House, the supposed blueprint for the Royal Society, New Atlantis is one of only two fictional texts written by Sir Francis Bacon (1563-1626), natural philosopher and statesman, and occupies a precarious position in his canon. While in many ways a “utopian” text similar to Andreae's Christianopolis (1619), Campanella's City of the Sun (1602; 1623) and More's Utopia (1516), to which it cheekily refers, it simultaneously subverts, manipulates and pulls itself clear of such generic bindings.
Appearing unheralded at the back of Sylva sylvarum (1626), a sort of compendium of natural historical experiments and observations published a few …
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