Veiras, Denis (or Denis Vairasse, etc.), (after 1622-c.1700). Writer of Huguenot extraction, who lived in England and France and published the Histoire des Sévarambes (5 vols., 1677-9; 1 vol. in English, 1675). It is the most important early Utopian novel, integrating history and customs from ancient Greece and Persia, the Incas, the Old Testament, and Louis XIV's France. The society organized in the Austral Land by Sevarias, an emigrant from Persia, has an elective ruler, governing both state and religion. The state owns all property, distributing to the citizens whatever they need. They are happy, industrious, but not perfect; illness and corruption occur (as some of the intercalated stories illustrate). All are equal, except for elected officials. The agrarian economy is prosperous, the public works impressive. The religion, lacking priests and doctrinally tolerant, combines theism and sun-worship. Life is elaborately regulated; numerous civil and religious rites mark stages of personal development. Boys and girls are educated together. Marriage is compulsory, military service also, for both sexes. Some of the book can be read as social criticism, but its publication was unhindered; it may have been meant to support indirectly the policies of Colbert.
[Christopher Betts]
