Utopianism offered socialist thinkers in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Britain a framework with which to discover a more perfect society. Socialists drew on the literary and theoretical precedents set by Plato, Thomas More, James Harrington and others, in their various quests for new moral, economic, and political orders. This paper will focus on how two writers, Thomas Spence (1750 - 1814) and Robert Owen (1781 - 1858), employed utopianism within their socialist theories. Its purpose is to shed light on the connections and tensions between early socialism and older utopian aspirations and longings.

Spence and Owen were highly innovative thinkers for their time. Deeply critical of the tumultuous changes taking place in Britain, they insisted that society had become atomised, driven by self-interest and a brutal disregard for poor rural and industrial workers. Their response was to formulate alternative social models, the underpinnings of which were harmony, economic and political egalitarianism, and co-operation.

In this comparative study, I will explore how Spence and Owen attempted to capture the idealism of the utopias that inspired them.