Edward Bellamy: A Brief Biography

PREFACE: After you're done reading, be sure to read the post I wrote right before this one. It's funny.

On March 26th, 1850, in Chicopee, Massachusetts, Edward Bellamy was born to Rufus King Bellamy, a Baptist minister, and Calvinist Maria Louisa Bellamy (maiden name Putnam). Of their other children, Frederick and Charles Bellamy were Edward’s older brothers. He was an un-graduated, law-studying frat boy at Union College who left law to pursue work in the business of newspapers in both New York and Massachusetts, which, like his college career, did not last long. After leaving the newspaper world, he entered the literary one, writing novels and short stories. At the age of 32, he got married and had two children, Paul and Marion, with wife Emma Augusta Sanderson. He died in Chicopee, Massachusetts from tuberculosis at the age of 48, and although this is not a very long time at all for a person to live, Bellamy achieved tremendous success and had an even greater impact on the world in which he lived. He was not only successful in his literary endeavors, but he was traveled, practiced law, and had at least attended some school. Bellamy’s idea of a utopia was “based on common ownership of resources and a benevolently managerial government” to take the place of “the tense, competitive free-for-all he had known during the Gilded Age.” (Meyer, W. B., The Geographical Review v. 94 no. 1 (January 2004) p. 43-54) Bellamy died while in the midst of a losing battle to change the world and cater it to the ideals that his novel embodied. However, many socialists and those that would soon be labeled as socialists, took Looking Backward: 2000-1887 to heart; there were some small utopian societies that began and were based on the structure of the society in Bellamy’s novel.

One of the utopian societies that was formed based on the structure of Bellamy’s socialistic society in his novel, is the Equality Colony near Edison, Washington, founded by Wallace Lermond, E. G. Pelton, and twelve others in 1897. Lermond said, "The people must be aroused from their present lethargy, indifference, and despondency. The country must be stirred from center to circumference. And the quickest and best way to do this is by colonizing a state such as Kas. was colonized prior to the Civil War. The example thus set would be contagious, and neighboring states would not be slow to follow the same road" (LaWarne). In practice, the colony of about 200 people (and growing) took to their trades and built necessary schoolhouses and warehouses. And although their hope was to convert America to socialism, the other ideals and philosophies of how to run their lives differed when it came to alcohol, smoking, religion, amongst other things. Eventually ran low on money and was taken over by anarchist Alexander Horr, so it really didn’t work out that well at all. My research tells me that those ideas were better left in the novel.

Bellamy’s works include his novel that gave him the most fame and propelled many novelists within a year of its publishing to write in the similar ilk of utopian societies, Looking Backward: 2000-1887, and his other less-known works such as the sequel to Looking Backward: 2000-1887, Equality, amongst others like Dr. Heidenhoff's Process, Miss Ludington's Sister, and The Duke of Stockbridge. Equality did not yield the same popularity in American culture as Looking Backward had, but an excerpt from it entitled “The Parable of the Water-Tank” had some ground with American socialists who reprinted it in propaganda pamphlets.

Sources:
http://www.answers.com/topic/utopian-communities
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bellamy
Meyer, W. B., The Geographical Review v. 94 no. 1 (January 2004) p. 43-54
http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5444