Edward Bellamy

Edward Bellamy (1850–1898) was an American author and social reformer. The son of a Baptist minister in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts, he studied law but turned to journalism and fiction, publishing several novels of modest success before Looking Backward, 2000 to 1887 (1888), a utopia of a nationalized and equalized America that sold hundreds of thousands of copies and gave rise to Nationalist clubs across the country and to a weekly paper, The New Nation, that he edited. Equality (1897), a sequel developing the economic argument, appeared shortly before his death from tuberculosis. His scheme influenced the Populists and many later socialists.