A Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria is a work of utopian fiction, published in England in 1641. It carried the name of Samuel Hartlib

Samuel Hartlib

Samuel Hartlib was a German-British polymath. An active promoter and expert writer in many fields, he was interested in science, medicine, agriculture, politics, and education. He settled in England, where he married and died...

, who published it, but is now attributed to Gabriel Plattes

Gabriel Plattes

Gabriel Plattes was an English writer on agriculture and science, and also now recognised as the author of the utopian work Description of the Famous Kingdome of Macaria, often attributed to Samuel Hartlib under whose name it was published....

. A short text of fifteen pages, it reads, according to Amy Boesky

Amy Boesky

Amy Boesky is an American author and a professor of English at Boston College.-Life:Amy Boesky is an Associate Professor of English at Boston College, where she teaches English literature and creative nonfiction writing....

, like a political address, and it was explicitly framed as an address to Parliament.

It is written as a dialogue, and is in the tradition of the Utopia

Utopia

Utopia is an ideal community or society possessing a perfect socio-politico-legal system. The word was imported from Greek by Sir Thomas More for his 1516 book Utopia, describing a fictional island in the Atlantic Ocean. The term has been used to describe both intentional communities that attempt...

of Thomas More

Thomas More

Sir Thomas More , also known by Catholics as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman and noted Renaissance humanist. He was an important councillor to Henry VIII of England and, for three years toward the end of his life, Lord Chancellor...

 — Macaria is an island mentioned in Utopia — and the New Atlantis

New Atlantis

New Atlantis and similar can mean:*New Atlantis, a novel by Sir Francis Bacon*The New Atlantis, founded in 2003, a journal about the social and political dimensions of science and technology...

of Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Albans, KC was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, author and pioneer of the scientific method. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...

. Hugh Trevor-Roper takes it to be an important formulation of the ultimate political ambitions of Hartlib and his followers (and in particular John Dury

John Dury

John Dury was a Scottish Calvinist minister and a significant intellectual of the English Civil War period. He made efforts to re-unite the Calvinist and Lutheran wings of Protestantism, hoping to succeed when he moved to Kassel in 1661, but he did not accomplish this...

), in the form of a reformed Christian society and welfare state

Welfare state

A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those...

. It covers the issues of economic development, taxation and education. Much of the content drew on Henry Robinson

Henry Robinson (writer)

Henry Robinson was an English merchant and writer. He is best known for a work on religious toleration, Liberty of Conscience from 1644.-Life:He was educated at St John's College, Oxford, and was a freeman of the Mercers' Company...

's Englands Safety from earlier in the same year.