I cannot sufficiently celebrate the glorious liberty that reigns in the public libraries of the twentieth century as compared with the intolerable management of those of the nineteenth century, in which the books were jealously railed away from the people, and obtainable only at an expenditure of time and red tape calculated to discourage any ordinary taste for literature.

Edward Bellamy (March 26 1850 – May 22 1898) was an American author and socialist most famous for his utopian novel Looking Backward a Rip Van Winkle-like tale set in the distant future of the year 2000. Bellamy's vision of a harmonious future world inspired the formation of over 160 "Nationalist Clubs" dedicated to the propagation of Bellamy's political ideas and working to make them a practical reality.