The Yellow Wallpaper & Herland

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'There are things in that wallpaper that nobody knows about but me, or ever will'

Hailed as one of the most distinctive and compelling literary voices of her era, Charlotte Perkins Gilman is praised today for her ground-breaking, feminist writing. Collected here, both The Yellow Wallpaper and Herland are extraordinary for scrutinising the patriarchal norms of turn-of-the-century America.

In The Yellow Wallpaper a woman frantically paces the empty nursery at the top of a secluded mansion. Her husband John, a physician, is of no comfort and she can't bear to sit with the new baby as his crying makes her much too nervous. And then there's the putrid, yellow wallpaper which seems to shift and creep around the room before her very eyes...

Herland, first published in 1915, follows a group of three men as they arrive in a female-only society. Peace and tranquillity thrive in this utopian land, forcing the explorers to question how their own corrupted, male-dominated world can survive.

About the Author

Charlotte Perkins Gilman was an American sociologist, writer, lecturer, and social reformist. As a child, Gilman was often in the presence of her father’s relatives, notably Isabella Beecher Hooker, a well-known suffragist, and Harriet Beecher Stowe, an abolitionist and author of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Many of Gilman’s own works reflect similarly feminist and social reformist perspectives, and in 1909 she established The Forerunner , a magazine that acted as a forum for discussion of these issues. Gilman’s most famous work is “The Yellow Wallpaper,” a semi-autobiographical short story written in response to being put on “rest cure” by a doctor to cure her depression.

Gilman’s works also include the poetry collection In This Our World, and the feminist texts Women and Economics and The Home: Its Work and Influence. She died in 1935.