Topic: Edward Bellamy

Edward Bellamy (26 March 1850  – 22 May 1898) was an American author and socialist, most famous for his utopian novel, Looking Backward, set in the year 2000. He was a very influential writer during the Gilded Age of United States history.

Edward Bellamy was born in Chicopee Falls, Massachusetts. His father was Rufus King Bellamy (1816–1886), a Baptist minister and a descendant of Joseph Bellamy. His mother was Maria Louisa (Putnam) Bellamy, a Calvinist. Her father, Benjamin Putnam, had also been a Baptist minister, but had to withdraw from the ministry in Salem, Massachusetts, following objections to him becoming a Freemason. Edward had two older brothers, Frederick and Charles. He was the cousin of Francis Bellamy, most famous for creating the Pledge of Allegiance.

Bellamy studied at Union College and in Germany. While at Union College, he joined the Theta Chi Chapter of the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity; he did not graduate. He studied law, and was admitted to the bar in 1871, but left the practice to engage in newspaper work, first as an associate editor of the Springfield, Massachusetts, Union, and then as an editorial writer for the New York Evening Post. He left journalism and devoted himself to literature, writing both short stories and novels. He married Emma Augusta Sanderson in 1882. The couple had two children, Paul (b. 1884) and Marion (b. 1886).