![Book Cover of Looking Backward: 2000-1887](/image/book/looking-backward-2000-1887.webp)
Looking Backward: 2000-1887
'Looking Backward: 2000-1887 ' Summary
Looking Backward: 2000–1887 is a utopian novel by Edward Bellamy, a journalist and writer from Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts; it was first published in 1888.
It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It influenced many intellectuals, and appears by title in many socialist writings of the day. "It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement".
In the United States alone, over 162 "Bellamy Clubs" sprang up to discuss and propagate the book's ideas. Owing to its commitment to the nationalization of private property and the desire to avoid use of the term "socialism", this political movement came to be known as Nationalism not to be confused with the political concept of nationalism. The novel also inspired several utopian communities.
The decades of the 1870s and the 1880s were marked by economic and social turmoil, including the Long Depression of 1873–1879, a series of recessions during the 1880s, the rise of organized labor and strikes, and the 1886 Haymarket affair and its controversial aftermath. Moreover, American capitalism's tendency towards concentration into ever larger and less competitive forms monopolies, oligopolies, and trusts began to make itself evident, while emigration from Europe expanded the labor pool and caused wages to stagnate. The time was ripe for new ideas about economic development which might ameliorate the current social disorder.
Edward Bellamy a relatively unknown New England-born novelist with a history of concern with social issues, began to conceive of writing an impactful work of visionary fiction shaping the outlines of a utopian future, in which production and society were ordered for the smooth production and distribution of commodities to a regimented labor force. In this he was not alone between 1860 and 1887, no fewer than 11 such works of fiction were produced in the United States by various authors dealing fundamentally with the questions of economic and social organization.
Bellamy's book, gradually planned throughout the 1880s, was completed in 1887 and taken to Boston publisher Benjamin Ticknor, who published a first edition of the novel in January 1888. Initial sales of the book were modest and uninspiring, but the book did find a readership in the Boston area, including enthusiastic reviews by future Bellamyites Cyrus Field Willard of the Boston Globe and Sylvester Baxter of the Boston Herald.
Shortly after publication, Ticknor's publishing enterprise, Ticknor and Company, was purchased by the larger Boston publisher, Houghton, Mifflin & Co., and new publishing plates were created for the book. Certain "slight emendations" were made to the text by Bellamy for this second edition, released by Houghton Mifflin in September 1889.
Book Details
Language
EnglishOriginal Language
EnglishPublished In
1888Genre/Category
Tags/Keywords
Author
![Edward Bellamy image](/thumbs/image/author/edward-bellamy.webp)
Edward Bellamy
United States
Edward Bellamy was an American author, journalist, and political activist most famous for his utopian novel Looking Backward. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of nu...
More on Edward BellamyDownload eBooks
Listen/Download Audiobook
- Select Speed
Related books
![Omega: The Last Days of the World Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/omega-the-last-days-of-the-world.webp)
Omega: The Last Days of the World by Camille Flammarion
On 25th century Earth, a comet made mostly of Carbonic-Oxide (CO) could possibly collide with the Earth. It is concerned with the philosophy and polit...
![The Red and the Black, Volume I Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/the-red-and-the-black-volume-i.webp)
The Red and the Black, Volume I by Stendhal
Le Rouge et le Noir is a historical psychological novel in two volumes by Stendhal, published in 1830. It chronicles the attempts of a provincial you...
![2 B R 0 2 B Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/2-b-r-0-2-b.webp)
2 B R 0 2 B by Kurt Vonnegut
In this chilling short-story by a master of the craft, Kurt Vonnegut creates a fictional world of the future where life and death are no longer matter...
![The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/the-food-of-the-gods-and-how-it-came-to-earth.webp)
The Food of the Gods and How it Came to Earth by H. G. Wells
The Food of the Gods and How It Came to Earth is a science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1904. Wells called it "a fantasia on the c...
![Pursuit Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/pursuit.webp)
Pursuit by Lester Del Rey
This is a thrilling science fiction novel that takes readers on a captivating journey through a dystopian future. The story follows Jim Stanley, a cou...
![The Sleeper Awakes Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/the-sleeper-awakes.webp)
The Sleeper Awakes by H. G. Wells
The Sleeper Awakes is a dystopian science fiction novel by English writer H. G. Wells, about a man who sleeps for two hundred and three years, waking...
![A Little Brother to the Bear Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/a-little-brother-to-the-bear.webp)
A Little Brother to the Bear by William J. Long
In the heart of the North American wilderness, where towering trees stand as silent sentinels and the air hums with the secrets of the forest, William...
![Old Mortality Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/old-mortality.webp)
Old Mortality by Sir Walter Scott
It is a conflict between the Covenanters, a group of Presbyterians who opposed the rule of Charles II, and the Royalists, who supported the monarchy....
![Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/autobiography-of-a-pocket-handkerchief.webp)
Autobiography of a Pocket-Handkerchief by James Fenimore Cooper
It is a satirical novel that takes readers on an unusual journey through the eyes of a handkerchief. The book is a fictional account of the life of a...
![Worlds of the Imperium Cover image](/thumbs/image/book/worlds-of-the-imperium.webp)
Worlds of the Imperium by Keith Laumer
"Brace yourself for a mind-bending odyssey through parallel worlds and a web of political intrigue in Keith Laumer's captivating science fiction maste...
Reviews for Looking Backward: 2000-1887
No reviews posted or approved, yet...