Edward Bellamy was an acclaimed American author and Christian socialist. His novel Looking Backward is a widely regarded work of socialist Utopian fiction and was referenced in many Marxist publications of the time. When it was first published in 1888, its success was behind that of only Uncle Tom's Cabin and Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ. It inspired a less successful sequel entitled Equality that was more of a political tract than a novel and generally spurred socialist movement both in the United States and abroad. At one point, there was even a Bellamy Party in the Netherlands.