It is the year 2000-and full employment, material abundance and social harmony can be found everywhere. This is the America to which Julian West, a young Bostonian, awakens after more than a century of sleep. West's initial sense of wonder, his gradual acceptance of the new order and a new love, and Bellamy's wonderful prophetic inventions - electric lighting, shopping malls, credit cards, electronic broadcasting - ensured the mass popularity of this 1888 novel. But however rich in fantasy and romance, Looking Backward is a passionate attach on the social ills of nineteenth-century industrialism and a plea for social reform and moral renewal. In her introduction, Cecelia Tichi discusses how the novel echoes the anguish and hopes of its own age while it embodies a sustaining myth of the American literary tradition-that man's perfectibility is attainable in the New World.
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About the Author
Edward Bellamy was an acclaimed American author and Christian socialist.His novelLooking Backwardis a widely regarded work of socialist Utopian fiction and was referenced in many Marxist publications of the time.When it was first published in 1888, its success was behind that of onlyUncle Tom's CabinandBen-Hur: A Tale of the Christ.It inspired a less successful sequel entitledEqualitythat was more of a political tract than a novel and generally spurred socialist movement both in the United States and abroad. At one point, there was even a Bellamy Party in the Netherlands.
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