Sarah Hogan begins her study of early modern English utopian literature by contending that this was a period during which England was “made strange to itself—historically as well as geographically” (2). This is a productive way of contextualizing early modern utopias, which present real and imaginary locations as being both foreign and familiar. Hogan goes on to provide a rich and thought-provoking analysis of the interconnections between utopianism and capitalism, which are particularly interesting when considered against the imperial context of that relationship. Her interest in interpretative methodologies—including postcolonial criticism, geocriticism, and feminist scholarship—and the book's roots in Marxist literary theory make this a wide-ranging study that approaches even familiar territory from new directions.

The author acknowledges her debt to Marxist critics in the introduction, and her argument is particularly influenced by Fredric Jameson. Hogan nevertheless critiques Jameson's tendency to diminish what she identifies as blueprint utopias and thus to overlook important features of the early modern utopia, including its focus on the potential for institutional reform and the imagination of new and improved institutions to better the human condition.

Chapter 1, on Thomas More's Utopia (1516), argues that the text is anchored in a “transitional moment, looking both backward and ahead” (29). Hogan's analysis of the text, which is highly attentive to its critical and theoretical contexts as well as to its contemporary setting, also looks backward and forward; the consideration of Utopia's origin myth and its status as an island are employed to argue that the text offered to its first readership “a worldview that anticipated the social and spatial ideals of capitalist-imperialist accumulation” (71). An attention to historical context and simultaneous openness to presentist readings are characteristics of the book that demonstrate its connectedness to our own world and the function of utopia in shaping it. Hogan's conclusion to the book articulates her belief that utopian texts challenge readers to consider what an equitable world might be like, and her wish that they should continue to do so.

Scholars of utopian studies will find other familiar texts here, such as Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627) and Gabriel Plattes's Macaria (1641). A particular strength of the book, however, is its inclusion of texts that have been comparatively neglected in terms of their utopian elements. The readings of Isabella Whitney and Aemilia Lanyer in chapter 4, for example, persuasively demonstrate the value of considering their poetry of place in a utopian context, showing how they “represent utopia as an absent reality, a no-place for those who lack a place and lack a livelihood” (145). Nonetheless, Hogan's desire to read such texts as utopian can sometimes be problematic. Though she argues that Edmund Spenser's A View of the Present State of Ireland (ca. 1598) contains “several of the defining traits of the utopian genre” (95), such as a diagnosis of abuses followed by a scheme for their reformation, Hogan's discussion of this text could engage more fully with what those defining traits are. Her further identification of William Shakespeare's The Tempest (1611) as utopian, which is made in passing in the same chapter, is also potentially problematic and not fully substantiated. It is a pleasure to read a study of early modern utopian literature that does not become bogged down in definitions and descriptions, but more substantiation is needed in places if such a broad range of texts is to be considered as belonging to the genre. Nonetheless, it is evident that Hogan's readings of these texts usefully expand our understanding of early modern utopianism and more than merit inclusion in the book.

One of the strengths of this book is its articulate and concise summary of critical positions on a particular question (the newness of More's Utopia, for example, or the utopianism of Marxism), which will be especially useful for a student readership as well as for scholars of other disciplines. That readership in particular may regret the lack of a bibliography in Other Englands, but all readers will enjoy its succinct prose and clear, concise organization. This is a highly enjoyable book, which will provide many new insights for scholars of the utopian elements of early modern literature and politics.