ABSTRACT
Looking Backward is not a novel likely to appear in courses devoted to the art of fiction. Edward Bellamy was a man with a message, and he wrote with no other aim than to drive it home. The main emphasis falls on the one overriding source of all the flaws in the contemporary social mechanism. This is the 'hideous, ghastly mistake', the 'colossal world-darkening blunder' of which Julian West speaks. In Bellamy's view, only by rejecting competition and working cooperatively can labour produce the wealth and abundance needed to support all of society. Labour is the water that fertilizes the earth, but under the present social organization, the water is largely wasted through the greed or spite or cunning or strength of those who compete against each other. In England, Looking Backward proved to be not to the taste of a distinguished fellow reformer and radical.
