[1] The story takes up immediately after the events of Looking Backward with the main characters from the first novel, Julian West, Doctor Leete, and his daughter Edith.

West's citizenship in the new America is recognized, and he goes to the bank to obtain his own account, or "credit card," from which he can draw his equal share of the national product.

Written in 1897, Gilman explains, "Mr. Bellamy has apparently abandoned fiction, and has at length broken the silence of several years with a volume which is neither novel nor a treatise on socialism in scientific form, but a prolonged reduplication of the monologues of Dr. Leete, the part of Looking Backward which has the least interest for most of its readers".

[4] On the other hand, John Dewey (who called Bellamy "a great American prophet") preferred Equality, considering it to be "more populist and democratic" than the "more popular and authoritarian" Looking Backward.

[5] Peter Kropotkin also received the book more favorably, arguing that it was superior to Looking Backward because Bellamy had removed the authoritarian aspects.

Kropotkin claimed that these elements did not fit the character of the former work in any case, and stated that he believed that if someone suitable could have conversed with Bellamy, they could have convinced him to declare for anarchism.