Looking Backward: 2000-1887 Summary Edward Bellamy
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Looking Backward by 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,...
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Edward Bellamy owes his entire literary reputation to a single work, Looking Backward (1888), one of the relatively few American books to have an indisputable effect on society and politics. Along wit...
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In the essay that follows, Sancton examines Bellamy's religious and philosophical views as they are expressed in Looking Backward.
It is a mistake to say of Edward Bellamy, as many have done, t...
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In the following essay, Khanna contends that the popularity of Looking Backward is founded on the text's sophisticated projection of an ideal reader, a process that mirrors the narrator'...
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In the essay that follows, Lipow locates the popularity of Bellamy's anti-democratic ideas in more general political trends among the middle class of the late nineteenth-century, particularly i...
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In the following excerpt, the critic discusses the perceived inadequacies of Bellamy's comparison of the nineteenth and twenty-first centuries through an analysis of the characters and plot, su...
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In the following essay, James analyzes the polarity of individualism versus conformity. He compares Looking Backward to other utopian novels, gives an overview of the philosophies of progress and indi...
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In the following essay, Gardiner contends that the form and structure of Looking Backward were perhaps more instrumental in generating a movement toward social reform than was the implied comparison b...
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In the following essay, Matarese proposes that Looking Backward was popular in part because it was consistent with the ideals inherent in America's unique national identity.
I have always belie...
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In the following essay, Widdicombe claims that the literary devices in Looking Backward and Equality undermine Edward Bellamy's message.
Ever since its publication in 1888, Looking Backward has...
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In the following essay, Roemer alleges that Bellamy's use of the conventions of domestic fiction contributed to the popularity of Looking Backward among nineteenth-century readers.
1988 was the...
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In the following essay, Halewood charges that the same characteristics of Looking Backward that made it popular with nineteenth-century readers would render the novel unappealing to a twentieth-centur...
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In the following essay, Hartman traces the evolutionary views of Charles S. Peirce and Edward Bellamy through their various publications and declares that both shared the idea that love is the great a...
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In the following essay, Connor correlates Bellamy's utopist ideas and some millenialist religious movements.
Introduction
Traditional scholarship has explored the connection between Edward Bell...
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In the following essay, originally published in The Nationalist in May 1890, Bellamy describes how Looking Backward evolved from his original writings of an ideal fantasy place with a social system ma...
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In the following essay, originally published in the Ladies Home Journal in April 1894, Bellamy explains how he formulated his ideas about social reform and why he chose the novel form to express these...
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In the following review of the 1931 edition of Looking Backward, Forbes disagrees with the ideas expressed in Heywood Broun's introduction to the edition, and states that the importance of Look...
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In the following essay, White asserts that Looking Backward is an important and unique novel in American literature and explores the three main elements that he believes contribute to its popularity: ...
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In the following essay, Filler examines the social and religious unrest in the late 1800s and maintains that Looking Backward may have been a catalyst of political reform by which a unification of the...
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In the following essay, Becker traces the relationship between materialism and social equality in Looking Backward and presents some of the opposing arguments to Bellamy's ideas.
To us today Ed...
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In the following essay, McHugh demonstrates the connection between Looking Backward and the Populist party and avers that Edward Bellamy's novel contained the ideal world the agrarians sought w...
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In the following essay, Samuels analyzes some of the main concepts in Looking Backward and concludes that they are still relevant 100 years later because society continues to face the same systemic ec...
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In the following essay, Jehmlich investigates the problem of labor as it is addressed in Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward, and examines the novel's influence on subsequent utopian treat...
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In the following essay, Khanna discusses Edward Bellamy's early utopian fiction in order to highlight the tension between “theory and praxis” in Looking Backward.
Utopian fiction ...
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Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy uses Julian West, the books main character, to predict what the future will be like in the year 2000. Written in 1887, the book tells the story of the thirty-year o...
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Julian West, a man born and raised in the 19th century has suddenly appeared in the 20th century. Due to an apparent mishap in the 19th, his body was never awaken and remained in its mesmeric state. ...
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Edward Bellamy
Edward Bellamy
Critical Essay by Thomas A. Sancton
Looking Backward: A Summary
