ABSTRACT
Bellamy was born in 1850 in what is now Chicopee, Massachusetts, the son of a Baptist minister. After lack-luster pursuits in law and journalism, he began the career for which he is remembered, the composition of quasi-literary literary representations of a future world from which all social blemishes had been eliminated. A sufferer from insomnia, the hero of the novel had an underground bedroom that afforded him absolute quiet, and on one occasion he slept there for 13 years, 3 months, and 11 days, to awaken in the home of the Leetes: a physician, his wife, and their good-looking daughter. If the glowing reputation of Edward Bellamy is hard to explain, that of Ebenezer Howard, the founder and leader of England's Garden City movement, is virtually beyond belief. Born in 1850, the son of a small shopkeeper, Howard started work as a clerk at age 15 and, over the next six years, drifted from one trivial job to another.
