Deserted: 1898

By Edward Bellamy

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• Language: English
• Publisher: DigiCat
• Release date: Sep 16, 2022
• ISBN: 8596547369004

Edward Bellamy

Edward Bellamy (1850-1898) was an American journalist, novelist, and political activist. Born in Chicopee, Massachusetts, he was the son of Baptist minister Rufus King Bellamy and his wife Maria. Educated at public school, he attended Union College for just one year before abandoning his studies to travel throughout Europe. Upon returning, he briefly considered a career in law before settling on journalism. Before his life was upended by tuberculosis at the age of 25, Bellamy worked at the New York Post and Springfield Union. After his diagnosis, he sought to recuperate in the Hawaiian Islands, returning to the United States in 1878. Thereafter, he pursued a career in fiction, publishing such psychological novels as Six to One (1878) and Dr. Heidenhoff’s Process (1880). His first major work was Looking Backward, 2000-1887 (1888), a utopian science fiction novel which became an immediate bestseller in the United States and Great Britain. Its popularity spurred the founding of Nationalist Clubs around the country, wherein readers of Bellamy’s work gathered to discuss the author’s revolutionary vision of a new American society. In 1891, Bellamy founded The New Nation, a political magazine dedicated to the emerging People’s Party. A left-wing agrarian populist, Bellamy advocated for animal rights, wilderness preservation, and equality for women. His novel Equality (1897), a sequel to Looking Backward, expands upon the theories set out in his most popular work and was praised by such political thinkers as John Dewey and Peter Kropotkin. At the height of his career, Bellamy succumbed to tuberculosis in his hometown of Chicopee Falls.

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Edward Bellamy

Deserted

1898

EAN 8596547369004

DigiCat, 2022

Contact: [e-mail]

Table of Contents

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Titlepage

Text

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By Edward Bellamy

1898

Table of Contents

What a glorious, all-satisfying country this Nevada desert would be, if one were only all eyes, and had no need of food, drink, and shelter! Would n't it, Miss Dwyer? Do you know, I 've no doubt that this is the true location of heaven. You see, the lack of water and vegetation would be no inconvenience to spirits, while the magnificent scenery and the cloudless sky would be just the thing to make them thrive.

But what I can't get over, responded the young lady addressed, is that these alkali plains, which have been described as so dreary and uninteresting, should prove to be in reality one of the most wonderfully impressive and beautiful regions in the world. What awful fibbers, or what awfully dull people, they must have been whose descriptions have so misled the public! It is perfectly unaccountable. Here I expected to doze all the way across the desert, while in fact I 've grudged my eyes time enough to wink ever since I left my berth this morning.

The trouble is, replied her companion, "that persons in search of the picturesque, or with much eye for it, are rare travelers along this route. The people responsible for the descriptions you complain of are thrifty businessmen, with no idea that there can be any possible attraction in a country where crops can't be raised, timber cut, or ore dug up. For my part, I thank the Lord for the beautiful barrenness that has consecrated this great region to loneliness. Here there will always be a chance to get out of sight and sound of