What is "spensonia"

Spensonia is a fictional Utopian country created by the English author and political reformer Thomas Spence. Spence laid out his ideas about Spensonia in a series of literary works published in the late 18th century:

• A Supplement to the History of Robinson Crusoe (1782)
• A Marine Republic, or A Description of Spensonia (1794)
• The Constitution of a Perfect Commonwealth (1798)
• The Constitution of Spensonia: A Country in Fairyland Situated Between Utopia and Oceana (1801)
• The Receipt to Make a Millenium or Happy World (1805).

Spence issued these works in several editions, creating a complex bibliography. Since he also developed and advocated his own scheme of language reform, he released his Spensonian works in both standard spelling texts and in his own Spensonian alphabet.

Spence's utopian writings are significant in that he was the first to apply Enlightenment ideas about democracy and majority rule to the genre, and also the first to attempt a utopian response to the Industrial Revolution. Spence's utopian works "were directed explicitly at the major institutions, economic and political, of the time. In so doing he provided the model of most future utopias."