Bellamy, E
NAME:
Bellamy, Edward
ACHIEVEMENTS:
Triggered American People’s Party.
NICKNAME/ALIAS:
None
DATE AND PLACE OF BIRTH:
26 March 1850, Chicopee Falls, MA
DATE AND PLACE OF DEATH AND AGE AT DEATH:
1898, Chicopee Falls, MA. Aged 48
DISCIPLINE:
Writer
FIELD:
Literature and journalism
LANGUAGE:
English
PARENTS:
Father: Rufus King Bellamy
Mother: Maria Putnam
SIBLINGS:
3 brothers
SPOUSE:
Emma Sanderson
CHILDREN:
1 son: Paul
l daughter: Marion
EDUCATION:
Local schools, Chicopee Falls
Union College, Schenectady, New York
Law school, Sprinfield, Massachusetts
MAJOR WORK:
“Looking Backward 2000-1887” (1888)
LIFE AND TIMES:
Bellamy, whose father was a Baptist minister, was brought up according to a strict Calvinist discipline. In 1867 he was rejected for West Point and instead went to college in New York, as a special student setting his own reading course.
It was probably during this period that Bellamy became interested in the ideas of the French socialist thinker Comte*. In 1868 he studied in Dresden, Germany and then traveled in Germany, spending most of his time in the urban slums. He said later that in Germany he was deeply affected by “the extent and consequences of man’s inhumanity to man” and that he had become aware of the results of the industrial revolution.
On his return to the United States he studied law at Springfield, MA, taking his law degree in 1871. He established a law practice but gave up after his first case, saying that he had no wish to be “a public bloodhound”. He turned to journalism and wrote his first published article - on the women’s vote. He worked for a short time for the New York Evening Post then in 1872 became literary editor and editorial writer on the Springfield Union. In 1875 he published his first short story, “The Cold Snap” in the Century Magazine and many of his stories then appeared in various journals. He resigned his job because of ill health in 1877 and the following year three of his novels were serialized. In 1880, together with his brother Charles, he founded the Springfield Daily News. In the same year, “Dr Heidenhoff’s Process,” Bellamy’s novel about the effect of guilt on the conscience, came out and was praised by the influential writer Howells*.
In 1884 Bellamy left the newspaper to devote his time to writing fulltime and published another novel titled “Mrs Ludington’s Sister” (1884) about psychic phenomena. He began writing his most famous novel: “Looking Backward”, in 1886 and it published in 1888. The novel reflected Bellamy’s socialist views and put forward a solution to the injustices of society by proposing political and social equality. Its tells the story of Julian West, a rich young man with a social conscience, who falls asleep in 1887and wakes up in the year 2000 to find that there is no longer any social injustice because the wrongs perpetrated by capitalism and mass industry have been removed. The economics of the country are directed by a single body, there is no buying and selling and no competition. The book also predicted the invention of radio, motion pictures and television. “Looking Backward” was a great success, mainly because it answered current concerns. Ever since the depression of 1873, the division between capital and labor had been widening and there were frequent strikes and riots. WD Howells called Bellamy’s book “intensely democratic” and as its reputation spread by word of mouth, sales increased and it became a best seller.
One of Bellamy’s main recommendations was the nationalization of all industries and in 1888 a “Bellamy Nationalist Club” was founded in Boston to discuss the application and impact of Bellamy’s ideas. Other clubs followed and in 1889 the Nationalist journal was launched. In the same year, Bellamy gave up his career as a novelist to concentrate on the reform movement his book had inspired. In 1891 he founded his own journal, The New Nation which he used to propagate his views. There were discussions in the American press about the formation of a third political party to foster Bellamy’s ideas and in 1891 the People’s Party was founded in Cincinnati, Ohio.
In England, the socialists in the Fabian Society discussed his ideas and published an enthusiastic review of “Looking Backward”, and the social reformer Annie Besant* lectured on Bellamy. The English writer and Fabian HG Wells* knew Bellamy and may have been inspired by him to write his novel “When the Sleeper Wakes” (1889) (serialized under the title “The Year 2000”), in which the protagonist wakes after a trance lasting two hundred years to find a world containing many of the inventions Bellamy had described, including airplanes, television and automatic restaurants. There were some critics, including the English socialist William Morris* who hated the book but the overwhelming reaction was favorable.
In America, a backlash against Bellamy’s ideas developed around 1893 and to many middle-class people the People’s Party began to appear as a dangerously radical organization, undermining the stability of society. Even the progressive Theodore Roosevelt* declared that the People’s Party were “plotting a revolution and subversion of the American Republic” and recommended lining up a dozen Populist leaders against a wall and “shooting them dead.” Within a couple of years, the Nationalist movement died out. Bellamy began writing “Equality” as a sequel to “Looking Backward.”
When it was published in 1897 it created very little stir. The book included an attack on the profit system in a chapter titled “Parable of the Water Tank”. This chapter was translated into many languages and widely circulated by labor leaders, socialists and Marxists, especially in Russia where 200,000 copies were printed in 1918. By now Bellamy was seriously ill with tuberculosis and in 1898 he died.
ASSESSMENT: Bellamy’s novel “Looking Backward” called for a socialist and economic utopia and inspired a short-lived political movement to implement his ideas. His work influenced socialists worldwide, particularly in Russia, and his novels continued to stimulate critical debate at the end of the twentieth century.
EXTRA CONNECTIONS: None
ONELINER: Edward Bellamy, early American socialist.
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bowman, Sylvia E et al, Edward Bellamy Abroad, An American Prophet’s Influence, Twayne Publishers, New York, 1962
Lipow, Arthur, Authoritarian Socialism in America, Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement, University of California Press, London, 1982
Morgan, Arthur E, Edward Bellamy, Columbia University Press, New York, 1944