Edward Bellamy

Britannica Concise Encyclopedia: Edward Bellamy

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Bellamy (credit: Courtesy of the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.)

(born March 26, 1850, Chicopee Falls, Mass., U.S. — died May 22, 1898, Chicopee Falls) U.S. writer. Bellamy first became aware of the plight of the urban poor at age 18 while studying in Germany. He engaged throughout his life in progressive causes and wrote several books reflecting his concerns, but he is known chiefly for his utopian novel Looking Backward (1888), which describes the U.S. in the year 2000 as an ideal socialist state featuring cooperation, brotherhood, and industry geared to human need. It sold more than a million copies; a sequel, Equality (1897), was less successful.

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Biography: Edward Bellamy

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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.

Columbia Encyclopedia: Edward Bellamy

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Bellamy, Edward (bĕl'əmē), 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).

Works: Works by Edward Bellamy

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(1850-1898)

1878	Six to One: A Nantucket Idyl. The Massachusetts journalist and reformer's first novel is based on his voyage to Hawaii in 1877.
1879	The Duke of Stockbridge. Bellamy publishes serially this historical romance dealing with Shays's Rebellion. His cousin, Francis Bellamy, would complete and issue it in book form in 1900.
1880	Dr. Heidenhoff's Process. The first of two romances that recall Hawthorne and show Bellamy's interest in psychic states. It would be followed by Miss Ludington's Sister (1884).
1888	Looking Backward: 2000-1887. Bellamy's best-selling utopian fantasy novel depicts the character Julian West falling asleep during the turbulence of the nineteenth century and waking at the millennium to find America changed by economic, cultural, and social reforms. The book is acclaimed by prominent figures including John Dewey and Charles Austin Beard.
1897	Equality. Bellamy's sequel to Looking Backward (1888) responds to charges made against the earlier book as well as proposals for instituting his utopian vision.
1898	The Blindman's World and Other Stories. Bellamy's only collection of short stories is published.
1900	The Duke of Stockbridge. Bellamy's historical novel about Shays's Rebellion had been issued serially in 1879; it is finally completed by the writer's cousin Francis Bellamy and brought out in book form after Bellamy's death.

Wikipedia: Edward Bellamy

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Edward Bellamy (26 March 1850 – 22 May 1898) was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000.

Edward Bellamy, circa 1889.

1 Biography
- 1.1 Early life
- 1.2 As a writer
2 Works
3 See also
4 Footnotes
5 Further reading
6 External links

Biography

Early life

Edward Bellamy was born in Ravensdale, Washington. At Kelseys house, 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. He had two older brothers, Frederick and Charles. He attended Union College, but did not graduate. While there, he joined the Theta Chi Chapter of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity. He studied law, but left the practice and worked briefly in the newspaper industry in New York and in Springfield, Massachusetts. He left journalism and devoted himself to literature, writing both short stories and novels. He married Emma Augusta Sanderson in 1882. The couple had two children, Paul (b. 1884) and Marion (b. 1886).

He was the cousin of Francis Bellamy, most famous for creating the Pledge of Allegiance.

As a writer

Main article: Looking Backward

According to Erich Fromm, Bellamy's novel Looking Backward is "one of the most remarkable books ever published in America." ^[1] It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.^[1] In the book, Julian West, an upper class man from 1887, awakes in 2000 from a hypnotic trance to find himself in a socialist utopia. The book influenced a large number of intellectuals, and appears by title in many of the major Marxist writings of the day. "It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement." ^[2] "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up all over the United States for discussing and propagating the book's ideas. This political movement came to be known as Nationalism.^[3] His novel also inspired several utopian communities. Although Looking Backward is unique, Bellamy owes many aspects of his philosophy to a previous reformer and author, Laurence Gronlund, who published his treatise "The Cooperative Commonwealth: An Exposition of Modern Socialism" in 1884.^[4]

Bellamy's second utopian novel, Equality, published in 1897, continues the story of Julian West as he adjusts to life in the future. Although Equality was less successful commercially or culturally than its prequel, a short story "The Parable of the Water-Tank" from Equality, was popular with a number of early American socialists, reprinted in various editions as a propaganda pamphlet.

Several hundred additional utopian novels were published in the US from 1889 to 1900, due in part to the popularity of Looking Backward. ^[1] ^[5]

Bellamy died from tuberculosis at his childhood home in Chicopee Falls.

Works

Footnotes

^ ^a ^b ^c Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward 2000-1887. Introduction by Eric Fromm. New York: Signet, 1960. ISBN 0-451-52412-8
^ (Fromm, p vi). 165
^ Edward Bellamy ("What 'Nationalism' Means." "The Eclectic Magazine of Foreign Literature" Vol. 52, No. 3. Sept. 1890, pg. 289)
^ A Brief Story Of Utopian Socialism In Action (Wayne D. Sneath, American Culture Studies 1890s course, Spring 1996) [1]
^ The Year 2000: A Critical Biography of Edward Bellamy (Sylvia E. Bowman,New York: Bookman Associates, 1958; page 107)

External links

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Edward Bellamy

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Edward Bellamy

Works by Edward Bellamy at Project Gutenberg
Looking Backward from 2000 to 1887 hypertext from American Studies at the University of Virginia.
Edward Bellamy at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
Edward Bellamy, Francis Bellamy and the Pledge of Allegiance

Persondata
NAME	Bellamy, Edward
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION
DATE OF BIRTH	March 26, 1850(1850-03-26)
PLACE OF BIRTH	Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts
DATE OF DEATH	May 22, 1898
PLACE OF DEATH	Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts

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		Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more
		Biography. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more
		Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/. Read more
		Works. The Chronology of American Literature, edited by Daniel S. Burt. Copyright © 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more
		Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Edward Bellamy". Read more

	Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (Sources) (novel)
	Looking Backward: 2000–1887 (Further Reading) (novel)
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