Bellamy, Edward (1850–1898)

EDWARD BELLAMY WAS born on March 26, 1850, in Chicope, Massachusetts. His father was a Baptist minister and his mother was the daughter of a minister. Both parents could trace their families to 17th-century New England roots. Bellamy appears to have had a relatively comfortable childhood, although his youth was overshadowed by the American Civil War.

In 1867, he attempted to enter the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, only to be rejected. After this disappointment, he studied literature for a year at Union College in Schenectady, New York, before making a trip to Europe. There, he studied the prosperous state china works in Dresden, Germany, and contrasted the conditions of its workers with the squalor experienced by England's working poor. Appalled by life in the ...