Looking Backward 2000-1887

Reaction and sequels

On publication, Looking Backward was praised by both the American Federation of Labor and the Knights of Labor.[25] Many members of the Knights read Looking Backward and also joined Bellamy's Nationalist clubs.[25] Looking Backward was also praised by Daniel De Leon, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Upton Sinclair.[25]

In 1897, Bellamy wrote a sequel, Equality, dealing with women's rights, education, and many other issues. Bellamy wrote the sequel to elaborate and clarify many of the ideas merely touched upon in Looking Backward.

The success of Looking Backward provoked a spate of sequels,[26] parodies, satires, dystopian, and 'anti-utopian' responses.[27] A partial list of these follows.[28] The result was a "battle of the books" that lasted through the rest of the 19th century and into the 20th. The back-and-forth nature of the debate is illustrated by the subtitle of Geissler's 1891 Looking Beyond, which is "A Sequel to 'Looking Backward' by Edward Bellamy and an Answer to 'Looking Forward' by Richard Michaelis".

The book was translated into Bulgarian in 1892. Bellamy personally approved a request by Bulgarian author Iliya Yovchev to make an "adapted translation" based on the realities of Bulgarian social order. The resulting work, titled The Present as Seen by Our Descendants And a Glimpse at the Progress of the Future ("Настоящето, разгледано от потомството ни и надничане в напредъка на бъдещето"), generally followed the same plot. The events in Yovchev's version take place in an environmentally friendly Sofia and describe the country's unique path of adapting to the new social order. It is considered by local critics to be the first Bulgarian utopian work.[29]

The book also influenced activists in Britain. Scientist Alfred Russel Wallace credited Looking Backward for his conversion to socialism.[30] Politician Alfred Salter cited Looking Backward as an influence on his political thought.[31]

William Morris's 1890 utopia News from Nowhere was partly written in reaction to Bellamy's utopia, which Morris did not find congenial.[32]

Bellamy's descriptions of utopian urban planning influenced Ebenezer Howard to found the garden city movement in England, and also influenced the design of the Bradbury Building in Los Angeles.

German Reclam edition 1919

During the Great Strikes of 1877, Eugene V. Debs argued that there was no essential necessity for the conflict between capital and labor. Debs was influenced by Bellamy's book to turn to a more socialist direction. He soon helped to form the American Railway Union. With supporters from the Knights of Labor and from the immediate vicinity of Chicago, workers at the Pullman Palace Car Company went on strike in June 1894. This came to be known as the Pullman Strike.

The book had a specific and intense reception in Wilhelminian Germany including various parodies and sequels, from Eduard Loewenthal, Ernst Müller and Philipp Wasserburg, Konrad Wilbrandt and Richard Michaelis.[33]

The Russian translation of Looking Backward was banned by the Tsarist Russian censors.[34]

In the 1930s, there was a revival of interest in Looking Backward. Several groups were formed to promote the book's ideas. The largest was Edward Bellamy Association of New York; its honorary members included John Dewey, Heywood Broun and Roger N. Baldwin.[35] Arthur Ernest Morgan, chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, also admired the book and wrote the first biography of Bellamy.[35][36]


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