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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 minis...

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 with Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and Ben-Hur (1880), Looking...

critic james wood turns to fiction Blame Freud for this unfortunate misconception: Our recounted childhoods are interesting to other people, even those we aren't paying $150 an hour to listen to us. Since the hourly rate for reading fiction is abysmally low these...

Looking backward Piece-by-piece restoration of 1869 home opens window to the past By NANCY A. HERRICK Journal Sentinel Interiors editor Sunday, June 18, 2000 Richland Center -- Just in case Jim Pollard has a lapse in memory, forgetting all...

Freshman Kevin Durant had his usual stellar game with 28 points and 13 rebounds, and No. 25 Texas overwhelmed Big 12 rival Oklahoma 80-69 Saturday.Durant, who leads the league in scoring and rebounding, just missed his third straight 30-point game. He can blame coach Rick...

WORLD WAR IV: THE LONG STRUGGLE AGAINST ISLAMOFASCISMBy Norman Podhoretz Doubleday, 230 pages, $24.95 That Norman Podhoretz would open his new and deeply troubling World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism with a quaint Victorian salutation, “Dear Reader”—most famously used in Charlotte Brontë’s Jane...

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 individualism over the centuries, illustrates this polarity in Looking Backward in comparison to Karl Marx's ideas, and asserts that there must be a balance of this polarity to prevent a “short-circuiting of the dynamic of freedom.”

In the essay that follows, Sancton examines Bellamy's religious and philosophical views as they are expressed in Looking Backward.

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 in the desire for economic reform of “big capital.”

Summarizes the plot of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward. Describes the character of Julian West and his Rip Van Winkle like adventure.

Edward Bellamy's utopian novel Looking Backward leads one to consider the importance of individualism. While the twentieth century that Julian West sees is the perfect image of utopian society, individualism did not progress along with it, as greater emphasis was placed on community and cooperation.