The third largest bestseller of its time. English original edition- 'No man any more has any care for the morrow, either for himself or his children, for the nation guarantees the nurture, education, and comfortable maintenance of every citizen from the cradle to the grave.' -Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward Looking Backward: 2000-1887 is a dystopian classic novel, the third largest bestseller of its time. It is the year 2000-and full employment, material abundance and social harmony can be found everywhere. This is the America to which Julian West, a young Bostonian, awakens after more than a century of sleep. West's initial sense of wonder, his gradual acceptance of the new order and a new love, and Bellamy's wonderful prophetic inventions - electric lighting, shopping malls, credit cards, electronic broadcasting - ensured the mass popularity of this 1888 novel. But however rich in fantasy and romance, Looking Backward is a passionate attach on the social ills of nineteenth-century industrialism and a plea for social reform and moral renewal. Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) was an American writer known chiefly for his utopian novel Looking Backward, 2000-1887.