Looking backward, 2000-1887 - Couverture souple

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) was admitted to the bar in 1871, but that same year he abandoned his practice to become associate editor of the Springfield Union (Massachusetts). Later, he worked as an editorial writer for the New York Evening Post. Bellamy’s heart was no more in newspaper work than it had been in the law. His main interest lay in the field of literature. He wrote several short stories and three novels, including Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process (1880), before he married Emma Sanderson in 1882. Forced by ill health to give up his editorial career, Bellamy devoted himself to writing. His novel Miss Ludington’s Sister was published in 1884. The young author’s intense awareness of injustices in the economic and social systems, as well as his desire for reforms, impelled him to write Looking Backward in 1888. “Bellamy Clubs” sprang up across the nation and the novelist embarked on a series of lecture tours and speaking engagements. In 1891, he founded the New Nation, a Boston newspaper, as an organ for his views, but increasing illness forced him to suspend publication. He continued, however, to work on the sequel to Looking Backward. It was published under the title Equality in 1897.
 
Walter James Miller—poet, playwright, critic, translator—has authored, co-authored, or edited 64 books, scores of scholarly articles, and hundreds of television and radio programs. Professor of English at New York University, he has won a writing fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts/ Ruttenberg Foundation.
 
Eliot Fintushel writes novels and short stories in and around the genre of science fiction and is a contributing editor to Tricycle magazine. Away from the word processor, he is also a busker and a traveling showman, a two-time winner of the National Endowment's Fellowship for Solo Performance Artists.

A huge bestseller in its day, Looking Backwards is a pure Utopia with no dark notes. Like Caesar's Column and The Iron Heel, we get huge swaths of exposition and a love story. However, because the narrator pops up in the best of all possible worlds (the USA in the year 2000), the story lacks the conflict and characterizations which make the Donnelly and London works interesting. The one part of the story with dramatic impact is an extended sequence at the end where he revisits the harsh 19th Century he thought he had left behind.

Bellamy predicts shopping malls, mass media (including sermons delivered by telephone!) and, most notably, credit cards. The whole of future society is explored, one component at a time; it gives the appearance of a well-engineered Victorian machine, each part functional, rational and a little bit cold to the touch. While this work had an enormous impact at its time, today it is primarily of historical interest. However, this is required reading if you are studying 19th Century utopian thought. (Quote from sacred-texts.com)

About the Author

Edward Bellamy (1850 - 1898)
Edward Bellamy (March 26, 1850 - May 22, 1898) was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000. Edward Bellamy was born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. His father was Rufus King Bellamy (1816-1886), a Baptist minister and a descendant of Joseph Bellamy. His mother was Maria Louisa (Putnam) Bellamy, a Calvinist. Her father, Benjamin Putnam, had also been a Baptist minister, but had to withdraw from the ministry in Salem, Massachusetts, following objections to him being made a freemason. He had two older brothers, Frederick and Charles. He attended Union College, but did not graduate. While there, he joined the T