government (so essentially socialism by way of unchecked capitalism). In the future, all the corporations in the United States have gotten so large they merged into one single megacorporation run by the U.S. Looking Backward is about a Bostonian who is put into a hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000.

It also inspired “Bellamy societies” who met to discuss Bellamy’s work or start utopian communities based off of the society in Looking Backward. Despite the novel’s popularity at the time, I had never heard of it before someone suggested it for our science fiction book club, so I was really curious to see what got people so passionate about it back then and why it’s completely dropped off the radar since then. To find out more, follow the links at the bottom of this item.Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy was written in 1887 and was the third best-selling novel of its time after Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Ben Hur. He places the novel in context both as a historical and a utopian novel, as well as exploring the psychology of the main character in the story. The book was very influential and attracted many Americans to socialism, including Eugene Debs, a future leader of the American Socialist Party and presidential candidate.ĭr Beaumont has written an introduction and commentary for the new Oxford World's Classics edition. By comparing the Boston of the 1880s with the fictional city it was to become, Bellamy illustrated clearly the industrial problems of the time and painted a picture of an alternative system that had moved beyond those problems. Written during a time of labour disputes and economic instability, 'Looking Backward' describes an economic evolution towards socialism without violent revolution. As the novel unfolds, the new world in which he finds himself emerges as a socialist utopia, where equality has been achieved between classes, and where the entire economy is harmoniously managed by the state. The book, first published in 1888, tells the story of Julian West, an aristocrat from late nineteenth-century Boston, who wakes up one day in the year 2000. Dr Matthew Beaumont, a lecturer in English & American Literature at UCL English, was the editor for a new edition of 'Looking Backward 2000-1887', by the nineteenth-century American author Edward Bellamy.

Looking backward 2000 1887