"Does the world really need another edition of Thomas More's Utopia?" asks Stephen Duncombe, the editor of The Open Utopia. After all, Utopia has been in print almost continuously since first published in 1516 and available in digital version since 2012. The Open Utopia joins a community of other freely available online editions, such as the Gutenberg Project version, Oregon State University, or the Literature Project to name a few. Duncombe argues that what makes The Open Utopia different is its very openness - "open to read, open to copying, open to modification." This means that The Open Utopia provides the total social reading experience - Duncombe has included links to scholarship on Utopia, various editions, analysis, letters, translations and illustrations. The Open Utopia makes the full text available for download in a variety of formats for a variety of devices. Readers can also add their own annotations and comments, using Social Book - software developed for social reading, piloted by The Open Utopia. Social Book works best with Google Chrome or Safari browsers.
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