Edward Bellamy

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) was an American novelist, an economic propagandist, and a social reformer. His memorable achievement is the novel Looking Backward.

Edward Bellamy was born on March 26, 1850, in Chicopee Falls, Mass. His father, a Baptist minister, and his mother, a minister's daughter, were both descended from 17th-century New England families. In 1867 Bellamy failed to get an appointment to West Point; instead he studied literature for a year at Union College in Schenectady, N.Y. He spent much of the next year in Dresden, Germany, where he observed the prosperity of the state-owned china works. Traveling in England, he was appalled by the misery of the poor victims of what he called "English serfdom." Returning home in 1869, he began to study law in the offices of a Springfield, Mass., firm. He was admitted to the bar in June 1871, opened his own office, took one case, and then completely abandoned the legal profession.

Bellamy accepted an editorial job on the staff of the New York Evening Post, and the following summer he returned to Springfield to write book reviews and editorials for the Springfield Daily Union. At about the same time he began publishing short stories in magazines. He continued his journalistic career until 1881, but his primary interest had become literature. By 1884 he had published four undistinguished novels. His marriage in 1882 and the birth of his first child in 1884 gave him economic reasons for concentrating his efforts on producing popular fiction, but the two events also gave him, he said, special reasons for working to improve the world in which his children were to live. Both ambitions were splendidly fulfilled when Looking Backward: 2000-1887 was published in 1888.

In Looking Backward a young Bostonian wakes after a hypnotic sleep of 113 years to find himself in the world of the year 2000, from which greed, misery, and war have been extirpated. Private enterprise has been replaced by a benign state capitalism, and the resulting society is a true utopia. Bellamy's characters are thin, but his economic parables are well wrought. The persuasive force of the book became apparent at once through the organization of Bellamy Clubs and through the movement Bellamy called "Nationalist." Speaking tours took much of his time and energy thereafter. From 1891 to 1894 he edited a weekly newspaper, the New Nation. Bellamy published Equality (1897), a sequel to Looking Backward, but it had much less force than his masterpiece. By that time his health was failing rapidly. He went to Denver for treatment of tuberculosis. He returned to Chicopee Falls the next spring and died there on May 22, 1898. A collection of his best short fiction, The Blindman's World and Other Stories (1898), was posthumously published with a preface by his longtime admirer William Dean Howells.

Further Reading

Arthur E. Morgan, Edward Bellamy (1944), and Sylvia E. Bowman, The Year 2000: A Critical Biography of Edward Bellamy (1958), give sympathetic accounts of Bellamy and his writings. Miss Bowman continued her excellent account of Bellamy's influence in Edward Bellamy Abroad: An American Prophet's Influence (1962). Edward Bellamy, Selected Writings on Religion and Society, edited by Joseph Schiffman (1955), is valuable for the works it presents and for its introduction.

Additional Sources

Bowman, Sylvia E., The year 2000: a critical biography of Edward Bellamy, New York: Octagon Books, 1979. □

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.

Edward Bellamy , 1850–98, American author, b. Chicopee Falls (now part of Chicopee), Mass. After being admitted to the bar he tried his hand at journalism and contributed short stories of genuine charm to various magazines. These were later collected as The Blind Man's World and Other Stories (1898). His novels— The Duke of Stockbridge (1879), Dr. Heindenhoff's Process (1880), and Miss Ludington's Sister (1884)—were followed by Looking Backward, 2000–1887 (1888), which overshadowed his other work and brought him fame. This utopian romance pictured the world in the year 2000 under a system of state socialism. Much of the book's appeal lies in its unpretentious style and its vivid picture of the imagined society. The work sold over a million copies in the next few years and resulted in the formation of "Nationalist" clubs throughout the nation and the founding of the Nationalist monthly (1888–91). Bellamy himself founded and edited the New Nation (1891–94), a weekly. Equality, a sequel to Looking Backward, appeared in 1897.

Bibliography: See biography by S. E. Bowman (1958, repr. 1979); J. L. Thomas, Alternative America (1983); D. Patai, ed., Looking Backward, 1988–1888 (1988).

Bellamy, Edward (1850–98), American novelist and political theorist, whose fame rests upon his popular Utopian romance Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (1888). Its hero, Julian West, a young Bostonian, falls into a hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes in the year 2000 to find great changes, where the moral, social and cultural benefits of a new system are everywhere apparent. This work had an immense vogue; a Nationalist Party was formed to advocate its principles.

Bellamy, Edward. See Looking Backward: 2000–1887.