Collected Works of Edward Bellamy Volume I

This first volume of the Collected Works of Edward Bellamy contains his two most famous novels: LOOKING BACKWARD from 2000 to 1887 According to Erich Fromm, "one of the most remarkable books ever published in America." It was the third largest bestseller of its time, after Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur. In the book, Julian West, an upper class young man from 1887, witnesses the transformation of the world into an utopia in year 2000. The book influenced a large number of intellectuals. It is one of the few books ever published that created almost immediately on its appearance a political mass movement. Bellamy Clubs sprang up all over the United States for discussing and propagating the book's ideas, which also inspired several utopian communities. EQUALITY In Edward Bellamy's words "Looking Backward was a small book, and I was not able to get into it all I wished to say on the subject. Since it was published what was left out of it has loomed up as so much more important than what it contained that I have been constrained to write another book." The story begins immediately after the events of Looking Backward, with its main characters, Julian West, Dr Leete, and his daughter Edith. It explains not only the institutions of Bellamy's utopian future, but likewise the course of historical evolution by which they were born out of the very different order of things existing in his time (and somehow today too). A large first edition was ordered by the publishers in his time, but in spite of this, it was entirely sold out within 36 hours of publication.