Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
General
Library of the best American literature: Containing the lives of our authors in story form, their portraits, their homes, and their personal traits, how they worked and what they wrote; choice selections from eminent writers, embracing great American poets and novelists, foremost women in American letters, distinguished critics and essayists, our national humorists, noted journalists and magazine contributors, popular writers for young people, great orators and public lecturers
American literature
Mr. Bellamy’s ideal as expressed in this book is pure communism, and
the work is no doubt the outgrowth of the influence of Emersonian
teaching, originally illustrated in the Brook Farm experiment. As
for Mr. Bellamy’s dream, it can never be realized until man’s heart
is entirely reformed and the promised millennium shall dawn upon the
earth; but that such an ideal state is ♦pleasant to contemplate is
evinced by the great popularity and enormous sale of his book. In
order to give his theory a touch of human sympathy and to present the
matter in a manner every way appropriate, Mr. Bellamy causes his hero
to go to sleep, at the hands of a mesmerist, in an underground vault
and to awake, undecayed, in the perfect vigor of youth, one hundred
years later, to find if not a new heaven, at least a new earth so far
as its former social conditions were concerned. Selfishness was all
gone from man, universal peace and ♠happiness reigned over the earth,
and all things were owned in common. The story is well constructed and
well written, and captivates the reader’s imagination.
♦ ‘pleasent’ replaced with ‘pleasant’
♠ ‘happines’ replaced with ‘happiness’
Edward Bellamy was born in Boston, ♦Massachusetts, on March 26th,
1850. He attended Union College, but did not graduate. After studying
in Germany he read law and was admitted to the bar in 1871 and has
since practiced his profession, at the same time doing journalistic
and literary work. For several years he was assistant editor of the
“Springfield (Mass.) Union” and an editorial writer for the New York
“Evening Post.” He has also contributed a number of articles to the
magazines. His books are “Six to One, a Nantucket Idyl” (1877); “Dr.
Heidenhoff’s Process” (1879); “Miss ♠Ludington’s Sister: a romance of
Immortality” (1884); “Looking Backward” (1887); “Equality: a Romance
of the future” (1897). The last named is a continuation of the same
theme as “Looking Backward,” being more argumentative and entering
into the recent conditions of society and new phases of politics and
industrial questions. It is a larger book and a deeper study than its
predecessor. The work was issued simultaneously in the United States,
Great Britain, France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, and other
countries. Owing to the recent interest in sociological literature
it is believed by Mr. Bellamy and his publishers that this book
will attain as wide a popularity as his other work on the subject.
Mr. Bellamy’s writings have caused the founding of nationalist and
communistic clubs throughout the United States, and his influence for
the last few years has been powerfully felt in European countries.
If this movement should continue to grow there is little doubt but
Mr. Bellamy will be honored in the future for the impetus his books
have given to communistic doctrines.
♦ ‘Massachsetts’ replaced with ‘Massachusetts’
♠ “Luddington’s” replaced with “Ludington’s”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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