# Looking Backward — Character guide

> Key figures in Looking Backward by Edward Bellamy.

- [Julian West](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/julian_west.md): Julian West belongs to the coach-riding class of 1887, engaged to Edith Bartlett and insulated by money from the misery he half-acknowledges. His hypnotic sleep drops him into Dr. Leete's Boston, where every assumption h
- [Dr. Leete](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/dr_leete.md): Dr. Leete is Julian's host, instructor, and chief apologist for the Boston of 2000, answering each incredulous question with patient, cheerful logic. Where Julian expects defensiveness, Leete offers the confidence of a m
- [Edith Leete](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/edith_leete.md): Edith Leete strikes Julian at once with a directness he calls more like a noble boy's than any girl's he knew, a quality he suspects may belong to her century rather than her alone. She reads his embarrassment at Mr. Bar
- [Edith Bartlett](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/edith_bartlett.md): Edith Bartlett is the woman Julian was to marry once his house was finished, a match of money and beauty among Boston's coach-riding class. The strikes that stalled the builders kept postponing the wedding, a small domes
- [Mrs. Leete](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/mrs_leete.md): Mrs. Leete presides over the Leete home as a companion and equal rather than a domestic drudge, her manner embodying the cooperative arrangements her husband describes. She and Edith treat Julian's nineteenth-century ass
- [Mr. Barton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/mr_barton.md): A preacher who delivers a sermon on the moral state of the 20th century.
- [Sawyer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/sawyer.md): Julian West's servant in the 19th century who assists with his hypnotic sleep.
- [Dr. Pillsbury](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/dr_pillsbury.md): A physician who attends to Julian West in the 19th century.
- [Berrian](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/berrian.md): A friend of Julian West from the 19th century, mentioned in conversation.
- [Mrs. Bartlett](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters/mrs_bartlett.md): Edith Bartlett's mother, a minor figure in Julian's past life.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/looking_backward_se/characters