One Book's Influence Edward Bellamy's "Looking Backward"

Abstract

IN January of 1888 there appeared in this country a modest novel called Looking Backward: 2ooo-1887. It received considerable attention from the critics, but the sales for that year did not exceed ten thousand. Then suddenly they leaped into the hundred thousands and climbed steadily into the millions, until it became the most talked-of book of the day, achieving a sale second only to that of Uncle Tom's Cabin. It was, furthermore, no mere popular book of the hour, for some fifty years later John Dewey said that what Uncle Tom's Cabin was to the antislavery movement, Edward Bellamy's utopian novel might well prove to be in the shaping of popular opinion for a new social order.' In times of great national stress people turn to a consideration of utopias-to dreams and plans for a happier world-as in the period of social disintegration following the Peloponnesian War they turned to Plato's Republic and in the turbulent era after the War of the Roses they found hope and guidance in More's Utopia.2 Hence it is not surprising that during the depression following the first World War a renewed interest in Bellamy's ideas appeared in this country, as well as a number of books analyzing utopian thought. And today, during wartime, an important study of America's foremost utopian-the newly issued authoritative biography of Edward Bellamy by Dr. Arthur E. Morgan-is possibly one