The preface is a fiction that is disguised as a historical document. In it the author assumes the persona of a man who is writing in the late twentieth century, but it is helpful to remember that this text addresses more than one possible audience: a fictional audience in the year 2000 and Edward Bellamy’s late nineteenth-century readers. Readers from Bellamy’s own time may have assumed that industrialization was the height of civilization and needed only a few reforms to make it last forever. However, this assumption is difficult for his imagined, late twentieth-century readers to accept. They live in such a vastly improved society that they may find it difficult to believe that conditions were so much worse only one hundred years earlier.

Such an introduction would certainly startle Bellamy’s readers and pique their interest about what could be superior to industrialization. It is a smart tactic on Bellamy’s part. The nineteenth century gave people the idea that everything was getting better year by year and that civilization was marching forward to a brighter future. In writing as if from the point of view of the future, and looking back at the poor, deluded people of the past, Bellamy critiques this ideology of progress.

Bellamy’s utopia is created as an answer to the problems of industrialization, “with all its shocking consequences,” which he regards as illogical, stupidly complex, and against common sense. He will write about it as if this society were already in place and functioning smoothly for one hundred years. His representative of the industrial system will be Mr. Julian West, and his representative of the enlightened new society will be Doctor Leete.
http://thebestnotes.com/booknotes/Looking_Backward_Bellamy/Looking_Backward_Study_Guide05.html

Edward Bellamy was born in Chicopee, Massachusetts. His father was Rufus King Bellamy (1816–1886), a Baptist minister and a descendant of Joseph Bellamy.[1] His mother, Maria Louisa Putnam Bellamy, was herself the daughter of a Baptist minister named Benjamin Putnam, a man forced to withdraw from the ministry in Salem, Massachusetts, following objections to his becoming a Freemason.[2]

Bellamy attended public school at Chicopee Falls before leaving for Union College of Schenectady, New York, where he studied for just two semesters.[1] Upon leaving school, Bellamy made his way to Europe for a year, spending extensive time in Germany.[1] Bellamy briefly studied law but abandoned that field without ever having practiced as a lawyer, instead entering the world of journalism. In this capacity Bellamy briefly served on the staff of the New York Post before returning to his native Massachusetts to take a position at the Springfield Union.[1]

At the age of 25, Bellamy developed tuberculosis, the disease that would ultimately kill him.[1] He suffered with its effects throughout his entire adult life. In an effort to regain his health, Bellamy spent a year in the Hawaiian Islands(1877 to 1878).[1] Returning to the United States, Bellamy decided to abandon the daily grind of journalism in favor of literary work, which put fewer demands upon his time and his health.[1]

Bellamy married Emma Augusta Sanderson in 1882. The couple had two children.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Bellamy