SOURCE: Roemer, Kenneth M. “The Literary Domestication of Utopia: There's No Looking Backward Without Uncle Tom and Uncle True.” American Transcendental Quarterly New Series 3, no. 1 (March 1989): 101-22.

In the following essay, Roemer alleges that Bellamy's use of the conventions of domestic fiction contributed to the popularity of Looking Backward among nineteenth-century readers.

1988 was the centennial of Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward; that's no secret. What may be a secret to many students of American literature and culture is that Bellamy's “A Love Story Reversed” also appeared in 1888. Another little known fact: in the early 1890's, an extensive survey of American public libraries revealed that among the most popular fictions, Looking Backward and Susan B. Warner's The Wide, Wide World (1850) were borrowed with precisely the same frequency (Mabie 509). In and of themselves these two coincidences may not be significant. But they do help to remind us that during the heyday...