Bellamy, Edward

Bellamy, Edward (1850–98), born in Massachusetts, had a public school education, toured Europe in 1868, returned to study law, but, though admitted to the Massachusetts bar, never practiced. He entered journalism, edited the Springfield Union, and in 1880 founded the Springfield Daily News. He had already begun writing fiction, publishing The Duke of Stockbridge as a serial in 1879. This novel, completed after his death by a cousin and published in 1900, was a sort of proletarian romance dealing with Shays's Rebellion. Other novels included Six to One: A Nantucket Idyl (1878), the result of a voyage to Hawaii; and Dr. Heidenhoff's Process (1880) and Miss Ludington's Sister (1884), romances showing his interest in psychic phenomena. These were overshadowed by the immensely popular Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888), a Utopian romance predicting a new social and economic order, which led to the founding of a Nationalist party that advocated its principles. To aid this cause and further his social theories, he founded the New Nation (1891), lectured widely, and wrote Equality (1897), a sequel to Looking Backward but much more of a theoretical tract. Bellamy's only other writings were The Blindman's World and Other Stories (1898) and The Religion of Solidarity (a fragment, published 1940). His early death from tuberculosis ended a career of social reform in which he set forth a theory of state capitalism that has greatly affected U.S. economic thinking and the proletarian movement.