Looking Backward 2000-1887Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) is a thunderous indictment of industrial capitalism and a resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia. Matthew Beaumont's lively edition explores the political and psychological peculiarities of this celebrated utopian fiction. - ;'No person can be blamed for refusing to read another word of what promises to be a mere imposition upon his credulity.' Julian West, a feckless aristocrat living in fin-de-si--egrave--;cle Boston, plunges into a deep hypnotic sleep in 1887 and wakes up in the year 2000. America has been turned into a rigorously centralized democratic society in which everything is controlled by a humane and efficient state. In little more than a hundred years the horrors of nineteenth-century capitalism have been all but forgotten. The squalid slums of Boston have been replaced by broad streets, and technological inventions have transformed people's everyday lives. Exiled from the past, West excitedly settles into the ideal society of the future, while still fearing that he has dreamt up his experiences as a time traveller. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (1888) is a thunderous indictment of industrial capitalism and a resplendent vision of life in a socialist utopia. Matthew Beaumont's lively edition explores the political and psychological peculiarities of this celebrated utopian fiction. - |
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asked atavism better Boston capital capitalist CHAPTER Charles Fourier Chicopee Falls citizens clerks common contemporaries course Daphne Patai doctor doubt dream dystopian Edith Bartlett Edward Bellamy effect Émile Zola equally exclaimed eyes fact fancy feeling fin de siècle follow grade guild hand human idea imagine individual industrial army industrial system interest Julian West knew labor Leete Leete's living Looking Backward means mental merely mind moral morning motive nation natural Nautch girls never night nineteenth century novel nowadays occupation organization Penthesilia persons political poverty prodigious published question race readers realize replied Dr second edition seems sense Shawmut peninsula sleep social society sort strange suppose sure tell things thought tion trade twentieth century utopian waste wealth William Morris women workers young