Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American writer, poet, lecturer, and feminist thinker whose work included fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. She was born on July 3, 1860, in Hartford, Connecticut, and was raised in poverty after her father abandoned the family. Lacking consistent formal schooling, Gilman briefly studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and worked as a commercial artist. She married Charles Walter Stetson in 1884, and their daughter was born the following year. Gilman experienced severe postpartum depression during this period, and she separated from Stetson in 1888. She subsequently moved with her daughter to Pasadena, California, where she became active in several feminist organizations while writing and lecturing on subjects including marriage, social reform, and the economic independence of women. Her story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” (1892) brought early recognition and remains her most widely read work. In 1894 she turned over custody of her daughter to Stetson and his second wife. Gilman married George Houghton Gilman in 1900. From 1909 to 1916 she wrote, edited, and published The Forerunner, a monthly magazine featuring her essays, fiction, poetry, and serialized novels. Gilman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1932 and died by suicide in 1935. 

“What she brought to the page retains a distinctive place in American letters: a captivating mix of perspicacity, subversiveness, and humor, propelled by an admirable taste for experimentation and an inexhaustible work ethic.”—Kate Bolick, The New York Review of Books